Okay, I’ll admit it: I have a "rotation" schedule that I have used to deworm my horses. And that "schedule" probably hasn’t changed much since … well, since a long time.

But, after sitting for 1 1/2 days at a parasitology conference (boy, do I know how to have fun!) at the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center, I came away with a new awareness of the problems I could have caused on my farm. I also came away with hope that if we as horse owners change our ways, we might be able to keep our "friendly" dewormers we have now and have them still work against the parasites.

It’s not that the dewormers on the market are not good products, it’s that we as horse owners have abused them. Kind of in the same way we have abused ourselves with antibiotics. We’ve created resistant "bugs" that are becoming harder and harder to kill.

Parasitologists at the meeting said, "Anthelmintic resistance is considered a major threat to the current and future control of nematode (roundworm) parasites of ruminants and horses, and a serious concern in parasites of humans