Why worm for tapeworm after a frost/frozen ground?

Always done it, just want to know WHY.

I believe they become dormant with the cold & less likely to infect horses. So deworming gets what they (horses) may already have. Then again in spring after the worms become active again.

Tapeworms in horses aren't a problem here but we used to always deworm for bots after a hard frost. It was to kill whatever passed out of the horse. The new dewormers act differently and I believe the news one dissolve them before they leave the horse. I'd ask the vet.

A tapeworm consists of a head with a segmented body, each segment independantly able to produce eggs.

The head attaches to the horse's gut and sucks nutrients, the segments mature. The most mature ones are at the end. When mature, the segment detaches and is passed out in fecal matter.

Next stage, mites in the ground eat the eggs, and these mites, in turn, crawl on the grass and are injested by the horse when he grazes, starting the cycle all over again.

I don't think the mites can live in the frozen ground, so the cycle breaks a bit over the winter. Thus, worming for tapeworms after the first hard frost can help get rid of most of the tapeworms inside ole dobbin.

Yup , I always do a Powerpac (5 day sdouble dose fendabendazole)after the first hard frost to kill any encysted strongyles in the digestive tract. The buggers a relatively hard to kill with any other dewormer except moxidectin and I don't feel comfortable giving that after all the side effects I heard about.

Doing it after the frist hard frost helps them from getting reinfected as readily. As you will be killing what is in the horse and the frost stops what is in the ground/grass.


But, as soon as the ground becomes unfrozen again the worms and larvae are back FULL FORCE! There is no such thing as oh there must be less worms around now because winter killed them. It is just not true :( sadly...

I worm for tapes year round - they have become a big problem everywhere in the world since the introduction of the 'mectin' based wormers in the '70s

The mectins don't kill tapeworm so I use a wormer that contains one of the mectins plus praziquontal.

I worm for them year round as the life cycle is reletively short, Internal development 1 - 2 months, external development 2 - 4 months. So the horse will be reinfecting itself several times during the warmer months.

Modern wormers are so good that I use the same one year after year. Have no resistance problems and 0 worm counts. My favourite id Parade - its Aniseed flavoured and has the same amount of wormer as all the others in half the carrier so I have far less to get in and stay in my horses mouths.

Modern thinking too is that parasite eggs can survive the cold better than they can survive the heat of summer.