29/03/2026
A nice picture to brighten up your Monday morning 😂 But can we talk about Bots. For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, this is a now dead Bot fly larvae that was attached to the stomach wall of one of my horses. Two days ago all my horses were wormed in preparation for going out into their spring paddocks, today I’ve seen dead Bot fly larvae like this in the majority of their droppings. The reason I’m highlighting this, is if I had worm counted my horses instead of worming them, I’m pretty sure they would have come back very low. We operate good paddock hygiene, we rotate fields, they all look extremely well. A worm count does not pick up Bots. Surprisingly, we didn’t really have a Bot fly issue last summer, maybe the odd one but clearly they were around.
While I am on board with being careful about the over use of workers and resistance issues, sometimes a wormer is needed regardless of count, particularly if you have seen Bot flies around your horses.
Over the last few years I have referred several horses onto vets for scoping as I believed their issues stemmed from gastrointestinal distress rather than musculoskeletal issues, the majority of these had been caused by ulceration from Bot fly larvae attaching themselves to the stomach wall, they also required an expensive course of omeprazole to help heal the damage. If you are experiencing issues that seem like symptoms of ulcers, it can be worth worming your horse as a first step and seeing if Bots are an issue, a cheap and cheerful Ivermectin based wormer will do the job for you. If symptoms persist obviously please contact your vet.
