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From Sylvia Scott, Natural Horsemanship Training Center
Question: I have one
question...Do you know of an easy way to get horses to
take their wormer, besides putting it in their feed?
Reason I ask is because it seems to be a fight with my
horse always, and if we put it in her feed, she won't eat
it. Just wondering if you have some answers there.
-
- Reply:
Deworming
problems - Yes, there's a very good and easy
solution to fix that problem. Take an empty dewormer
syringe and fill it with plain apple sauce.
Desensitize the horse to the syringe first by rubbing
it all over the horse's neck, face, giving her a good
scratching pleasurably with your fingernails at the
same time where you are placing the syringe
throughout. Then use advance/retreat as you get close
to the lips. Get close to the lips, but pull away
(retreat), going back to spots she accepted it, before
the horse pulls away there first herself. Do that
until she'll accept you rubbing the side of her mouth
with it (again, retreat before she retreats and you'll
get there faster).
-
- Once she accepts the
syringe rubbing on the side of her mouth there,
contain her head with one hand holding her muzzle (so
she can't fling her head around) and then squirt the
apple sauce into her mouth. She'll be surprised, because
she's been associating the dewormer with yucky tasting
stuff and horses love applesauce! Walk away. Leave her
on that positive.
-
- By the way...the best
way to squirt anything into a horse's mouth, like
dewormer or any oral medicine is:
- Have the syringe
ready, all prepped and ready for it to be
"plunged." I always test first to make sure
something's going to come out when I'm ready so there
are no surprises (like forgetting to
"unlock"/unscrew the safety clip on
most dewormers--and don't forget to take the tiny
plastic cap off the end!).
- Keep the syringe in
your left hand and stand on the left side of the
horse, facing forward by the horse's head.
- Reach your right arm
underneath the neck area and grab the "nose
handle" on the opposite side (the bony ridge
across the top of the horse's nose/muzzle) with your
right hand, and hold the horse's head steady there.
- With your left hand,
take the syringe and stick it in the crack of the
corner of the horse's mouth there, then point it upward
(because you are going to want to squirt up into
the mouth/base of tongue so that the horse will be
sure to swallow it and so it won't just squirt out the
other side of the mouth or fall out the bottom or have
the horse be spitting it out. High up into their
mouth, they can't spit it out.
- With the syringe,
push until the horse loosens the lips and mouth there
(there are no teeth there) and when the syringe
is well in the mouth, quickly push the syringe
plunger, making sure you squirt the entire contents
high into the mouth, high up on the tongue.
Do this calmly.
- Remove the syringe,
release the head with your right hand that was
containing it and you're done. Stoke the horse's neck
for reward. Don't make a big deal of it and the horse
is less likely to think it's a big deal.
After you've squirted
the applesauce in the horse's mouth, return the next day
and do the exact same routine as above, starting with
desensitizing, ending with squirting the apple sauce in
her mouth again. Walk away on that positive.
Next day, same thing.
Very soon she's going to start really looking
forward to that dewormer syringe with applesauce!! Do this
every day for a while and then skip days for a bit, coming
back to do the applesauce in syringe routine again,
spreading out the days you do this. Then...one day, when
she's due for the deworming, oops, there's the real
dewormer paste in it that day, but she won't know
that beforehand, she'll think it's applesauce coming
again! But she'll tolerate it now because you've turned it
into a regularly pleasant event. Next day come back and
this time it's apple sauce again.
Paste deworming,
incidentally, should be done every other month. So that
means if you deworm the horse on Jan. 1, you'll do it
again next on March 1. Keep track, writing it on your
calendar the days you've done it, and which dewormer you
gave the horse, and what day she is due next. Deworming is
very important for your horse's overall good health to
kill parasites they pick up via eating hay/grass. And talk
to your vet about what dewormer is best for your horse in
your region so he can advise which to give her at what
time of year. Not all dewormers kill the same parasites
and the vet will probably advise you how to vary during
the year. For example, not all dewormers kill tapeworms,
and that's something you're going to probably want to have
killed in the fall before they go into winter, to keep
their weight up and them the healthiest. But again, get
your vet's advice there for the right deworming program
for your horse.
Tip: When you go this
route for desensitizing your horse to the deworming
process, you can also dip the tip of the applesauce-filled
syringe in molasses as well if you really want to get her
hooked on it happily!
Do this above for a
while and before long you won't usually have to go
back to the applesauce routine anymore. She will be
reprogrammed to tolerate the deworming process from then
on.
Incidentally, most
deworming problems happen because at some time a horse was
forced there to take the dewormer, sometimes roughly. And
the problem then ever-escalates. The more they fight it,
and the more the human fights them back, guess who
loses that battle there? The human! You can't force a
horse, a 1,000+ animal to take something into their
mouths they don't want to no more than you can force a
toddler you can't get green beans down if they don't want
it! And it's not healthy nor recommended to force (in
either case!). Most horses if never forced from the
beginning, if they trust their human, will take dewormers
just fine. It doesn't taste that bad, just has
a weird globby consistency to them. But most of the time I
see deworming problems, it's because the human got too
forceful somewhere along the lines there with the
deworming, got in a fight with them, and the horse
now associates deworming with some kind of uncomfortable
struggle, triggering fear in them. And soon she's
associating the taste of the dewormer with a struggle
& fear. Oops.
But backing up now,
calmly going the applesauce route as described above fixes
that problem and gets the horse accepting it calmly,
willingly from then on. This route for desensitizing the
horse to the deworming process works. Try it, you'll see!
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