Over the past few years equine parasite control guidelines have been on a roller coaster ride. Many veterinarians now recommend owners focus their attention on horses with the highest parasite burdens, but how can you tell which horses are infected? Researchers recently tested whether a stall-side fecal test could identify horses with high internal parasite burdens.

At the 2014 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum, held June 4-7 in Nashville, Tennessee, Nicola Kerbyson, BVMS, Cert. AVP (EM), MRCVS, shared the study's results in a poster presentation.

Kerbyson, a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, worked with colleagues to determine if albumin contained in horses' feces was related to the otherwise healthy animals' parasite burdens; the team measured albumin levels via a commercially available fecal blood test, produced by SUCCEED.

The researchers collected feces from 21 mature horses of mixed breeds and ages to test for albumin and to perform fecal egg counts on. Prior to the study, all the horses underwent an annual ELISA test to screen for tapeworms. Then the researchers administered moxidectin (which targets small strongyles) to all horses and praziquantel (which targets tapeworms) to horses whose fecal egg counts indicated high tapeworm burdens. Two weeks after anthelmintic administration, Kerbyson and colleagues repeated the albumin tests, fecal egg counts, and tapeworm ELISAs