Animal Care Hospital - Fayette County Veterinarians, Dental, Dogs, Cats, Horses, Livestock

Equine Nutrition :: Equine Dentistry :: Equine Vaccination/Deworming
Equine Mare & Foal Care :: Equine Castration

Equine Preventative Health Care Recommendations

The following recommendations are generalized and are provided as guidelines for the Mid-south Area. Each horse's Preventative Health Care Program should be individualized through disease risk assessment, based upon the horse's intended use, travel, and contact with other equids.

Click Here For: Vaccination Recommendations

Stomach Bots:
There are 3 species of Horse Bot Flies. The adult Bot Fly is hairy and beelike in appearance and is about the size of a honey bee. Most horse owners have seen the white, yellow, or black Bot Eggs attached to the hairs of their horse's legs and mane. While grooming the horse licks the eggs, and once in the horse's mouth the egg hatches, and a larva is released. This larva migrates to its host tissue (Nose, Throat, or Stomach depending on fly species), at the host site the larva will penetrate the tissue where it will grow until the next spring when it is passed in the horses feces. The larva then develops into an adult, and the lifecycle repeats.

Common problems caused by bots are stomach ulcers with secondary infection and in severe cases, unthriftiness and weight loss.

Horses should be dewormed with an approved boticidal drug at least twice yearly to control bot fly larvae.

Also note the Long Stem Feces in the pictures, which indicates dental disease!

Equine Nutrition :: Equine Dentistry :: Equine Vaccination/Deworming
Equine Mare & Foal Care :: Equine Castration