It's that time of the year (again!) so today I went to Farmlands and bought a 250ml bottle of equitak excel and a litre of bomatak-c. As a few of the horses were last drenched with equitak excel (broodmares pre-foal drench and stallions), I will use the bomatak on them but the rest of the crew get their bi annual mega worm.
I wormed Hamish, Maxi, Portia and Strawberry on Monday with my remaining EE and today it was Reilly, Maude and Aine's turn. I have just started feeding Reilly to help ensure he is well prepped nutritionally pre serving and he was getting Bomatak-c so I just dropped 60ml in his feed, which he duly gobbled up. He weight taped at 500kg. He's looking good!
Maude weight taped at 600kg so got 70ml and Aine got a 20ml dose (I didn't put her through the added stress of a weigh tape). It surprises me how well foals take their wormer, although I guess she had no idea what was about to happen and by the time she realised, it was over!
I like to allow for a little more than the weight tape estimate. Out of interest (as both were wormed a month ago) I weight taped Hooty and Debi. Hoots came out at about 575kg whereas Debi was closer to 700kg. I usually worm the clydies for 800kg to be extra sure that I am not under dosing so think that is pretty spot on.
I popped in to my wonderful vet at lunch time for a chat about a few things, including Hooty's milk loss. I cleaned her legs today as they were covered in sticky milk residue. He said that things should be fine and she should still have enough colostrum for baby and, although it is definitely not usual, esp. in maiden mares, it does happen and, if she is well in herself then there is very little chance that there is anything wrong with the foal. She would be pretty sick by now if there was. This helped settle my worries a little although I have to admit to being very nervous about this foal. The milk she is now dripping is white, sweet and sticky - surely she must be close!! I have bandaged her tail in eager expectation but, she has a very swishy tail and I have crap bandaging skills so I fully expect it to be dropped out in the paddock when I next go out!
Nick and I have discussed the colostrum issue and decided to steal some colostrum off Debi once she has foaled so we can store it in the freezer in case of emergency!
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