23/06/2026
Horse owner was telling me recently that they managed parasite levels in her herd by dragging a gate behind a quad bike and routine worming … sound familiar? Firstly dragging anything is going to flatten and spread manure which will get rid of obvious piles of manure, but is it stopping reinfestation from any parasites within the manure…. The answer is no! Breaking up a fresh manure pile on a hot summers day is a potential death sentence for any L1 (early) stage strongyle, when at its most vulnerable and before it’s started to gorge on microbial and bacterial matter within the manure. Less so when it has molten to become an L2 larvae, but if the paddock is strewn with scattered manure from you spreading it, then the process of continued gorging its made that more easier. But the time the larvae has developed to L3 (infective) it no longer can eat and is ready to break from from the confines of the manure anyway, so all spreading is doing is make that task easier for the larvae. In mild warm conditions with a dose of humidity the speed of development from L1 to L3 could be as little as 3 days. …… As for routine worming, unless it’s backed up by f***l egg counts (FEC) you can only be guessing if the dose was correct, if the dose worked or in the very worst scenarios if your animals are harbouring parasites that have developed resistance to some of the commercially available chemicals… or the very least as is the case with one of my horses he never needs worming as he never presents with any egg burden shown in a FEC…. therefore for the sake of a precautionary FEC at $9.50 I’m saving on the cost of routinely administering a wormer
08/05/2026
When's the best time to get manure collected and off the paddock....Best answer: as soon as you can. There are environmental factors that might govern your urgency though and in some cases, you might not even want to bother. Mild temperatures and moisture are going to give any Small Strongles eggs in a manure pile, the best conditions to hatch quickly and develop into infective larvae. The stages of development begin with eggs being passed into the environment in f***s from the host. If conditions are right the eggs can hatch withing as little as three days and become what is known as L1 larvae, that later develop into a more robust form known as L2. Both these stages exist and feed off bacteria and organic material within the manure pile. Once developed into the L3 stage they are known as infective larvae and are free to migrate from the manure pile. At this stage they develop a protective coating over there body that seals them into a hardened sheath that also covers their mouths, so from this point on their energy supply is limited to what they have consumed up to this point. Survival could be up to 6 months but a study that was conducted in Japan shows some interesting facts. Development and survival are very much dependent on the environment the initial egg deposits are made into. Rich moist peat soils give the highest probability of eggs surviving to infective larvae stage and at the other end of the spectrum dry sandy soils give the worst. So if you have moist, peat soils, with healthy pasture you actually need to be more vigilant removing manure than if you have dry sandy soils with sparse vegetive cover. Cold weather will always slow down the development but during summer we do not leave removing manure longer then every 3 days.
19/06/2026