 Welcome. Thank you for joining us for our third horse management webinar. Today's webinar is going to be on parasite management, so both internal and external parasites. The speakers today are going to be Dr. Carrie Hammers going to start us out with what the heck are parasites and then some management tips and and how to manage that. Paige is going to, Rachel's going to follow that with how do you sample? How do we collect a sample in practical on farm application? Paige is going to follow with external parasites. So where Carrie is going to focus on internal, Paige is going to focus on external, the biting kind on the outside of the animal. And then I'm going to follow up with Minneur, of course. So we are going to end with talking about Minneur. And so Paige, you want to click forward for me? All right. So our outline for today, we just went through, we're going to do internal collecting external and Minneur management. And with that, I am going to turn it over to Carrie. So one thing we need to talk about is what our horses that are infected with parasites might look like. And one of the things that comes to mind are horses that have this dull hair coat. They kind of look like the winter hair that isn't shedding off very well. It might have a pot belly. So the bigger belly sticking out, but you can still see a little bit of ribs. Horses may exhibit frequent signs of kind of mild colic. So their belly hurts, they're kicking at their belly. You may see horses that have diarrhea. They may be losing weight. They may be a little lethargic, not performing like they usually do. But one thing we also need to remember is sometimes they look almost perfectly fine. So we can have some pretty shiny coated horses that have good weight and are doing really well. But if we check their manure, we'll find that they're infected with parasites. So it's not always the horses that are clinically ill that have parasitic infections. Sometimes our horses that appear relatively healthy do as well. We're going to talk today just about the most common internal parasites that are problems for our horses, especially in this area, so the upper Midwest. And those are starting in the center blue box, tapeworms, moving up to the red box, ascorids, the light blue box, strontials, the purple box. I guess they're circles. I shouldn't call them boxes. Pinworms and the green circle bots. So tapeworms, ascorids, strontials, pinworms and bots are the ones that we see the most trouble with here in our area. So if we talk about each of those just a little bit more in depth, tapeworms are ones that we used to not really worry about, but we found out that they're much more prevalent and dangerous than we originally thought. So the average incidence in the US is 54%. So basically half of the horses have tapeworms. In Minnesota, that number is super high. We basically figure that almost all horses have some sort of tapeworm infection. And as you move to the more arid regions, so as we get to Montana, that number starts to drop. So the dry arid conditions usually have much less of a problem with tapeworms. The Minnesota lakes area tends to be much higher. You can kind of gauge where you live as to how much tapeworms might be a problem in your area. These guys are a flat segmented worm and they love to live at the junction of where the small intestine meets the large intestine. And so the first part of the large intestine is the secombe. They can cause some real severe inflammation at that area and can even cause a type of ileocolic. The tapeworm has an intermediate host. So the little diagram in the lower right hand corner of your screen shows that as the eggs are passed out of the horse, they are in the grass and they're picked up by a grass mite. That grass mite is then ingested by the horse as they're out grazing. So that little grass mite species is what transfers the eggs back into the horse as they're grazing. Alright, if we move on to ascrids or roundworms, these are the ones that we can see in the manure and we often see them after a horse has been dewormed. So you may notice that these large white worms in your horse's manure can be very alarming when you see them. But these are usually ascrids. They're most common in young horses, so are foals, weanlings, and yearlings. As a horse matures, they start to develop a bit of immunity against these worms and so they don't seem to be as big of a problem in our adult horses. Now one of the reasons we worry about ascrids is because in their larva stage, so as they're developing, they migrate throughout the horse. So they leave the small intestine, they enter the bloodstream, they go to the liver, they go to the lungs. They can actually be coughed from the lungs back into the mouth and re-swallowed where they mature in the intestine again. So as these little larvae are galvanting around throughout the horse's body, they can cause damage to the arteries. They also, as they grow into these large worms, can cause colic, so they actually can block the small intestine when enough of them pack in that area. So they can really be a problem, especially in our younger horses. Alright, strontials. There's two main types of strontials. They're known as large and small strontials, so large strontials are very damaging. And those larvae, similar to the roundworms, can migrate from the intestine, go out into the bloodstream and then return back to the intestine where they mature and lay their eggs. These large strontials used to be the ones that we really worried about. They caused a lot of damage to arteries around the intestine and horses and were really a problem. They've become much more controlled and we don't see them being as much of a problem in today's age. Now what is becoming a larger problem are the small strontials, so the sciathe stones. And these guys become a problem because they're much harder to get rid of. They can burrow into the intestinal wall and cover themselves and basically form a cyst that basically prevents the drugs from or dewormers from killing them. It kind of protects them in a little cocoon area. And so the small strontials are ones that we really worry about now. And these guys will cause anemia, they can cause diarrhea, and they also, as they damage the arteries around the intestinal area, can really cause a decrease in blood supply and colic. In this picture that I just put up, the small little red worms are the strontials. So they get their nickname blood worms because they like to feast on blood and it gives them that red color. So the small little red pieces in the manure sample there are strontials. Moving on to bots. So bot flies will lay eggs on usually the lower legs of a horse's body, but you can also see them on the neck. You can see them on the chin. These little yellow eggs, the picture on the right, shows these little yellow legs on the hair of the horses. Sometimes you think it's dirt or dandruff, but as you try to brush it off, you'll see they're adhered to the hair very tightly, so they're stuck on there. Those are the actual bot eggs. And they are activated and basically enter the horse's mouth as a horse itches. They rub their head and on their lower legs, they ingest those eggs. Those larvae will hatch, enter the mouth and migrate to the stomach. And then eventually they will pass into the manure in late spring and complete their life cycle and hatch out into flies again. So the picture on the lower right, the blue circles are showing those little red larva. And so those are what they look like. Sometimes you can actually see one of those larvae in a horse's mouth. So as a horse maybe is getting a dental procedure done, sometimes you'll find those bot larvae. More commonly we see them in the stomach of the horse. Where they attach, they cause some inflammation and they'll damage that area. So it's almost like they cause a little ulcer. So little ulcers in the mouth and then ulcers in the stomach where they attach. And the last worm I'm going to talk about are pinworms. So these are a pretty common large parasite and they live in the large intestine of the horse. The females migrate to the rectum and will deposit their eggs out around the anus. And so the picture on the right, that little cream worm you can see there, that's a female coming out to lay her eggs. And as the females do that and those eggs as they're attached are itchy. And so the horse tries to relieve that itch by rubbing its tail against any surface it can find. And so one of the common signs we see in horses infested with pinworms are that they're rubbing their tail. Rubbing and itching the hair on their tail. Now that doesn't mean that all horses with an itchy tail have pinworms, but it is one of the common signs. So that was just a brief overview of the most common parasites that we worry about, internal parasites. And so what are we going to do to manage them? Our three big goals for parasite to control are to minimize the risk of actual clinical disease. So a small number of parasites are normal in the horse and it actually helps stimulate their immune system and does some good things. So we're not necessarily looking to eliminate and make a horse have a zero parasite burden, but we need to keep the burden low enough that the horse can operate be healthy and isn't showing any signs of parasitic disease. We want to control the amount of parasite eggs that are released into the environment and their ability to infect other horses. And then we also want to maintain good drugs. So we want our dewormers to be efficacious and we want to minimize resistance because that is one of the problems is that these parasites will build resistance through the drugs we use. And then those dewormers are no longer efficacious. So how do we do that? Now traditionally, programs have focused on rotation of deworming agents and very regular deworming intervals. And this schedule was based on the life cycle of the large strontial. So if you remember when I talked about them, I said they used to be a real problem. We worried about them. They caused a lot of arterial damage. And so this every two months, every three months, that's based on their life cycle. And so we would alternate deworming agents every two to three months to basically attack that large strontial. We've started to have some big problems with resistance with some of the deworming agents that were being utilized. And these large strontials really aren't that much of a problem anymore. And so this kind of approach is really outdated for what we're doing now. So what we do recommend is a targeted program that is a more individualized horse approach and it's based on fecal egg counts. And that brings up the question, what is a fecal egg count? And it's just like it sounds, we are counting eggs in the feces. So it's a microscopic evaluation of the parasite eggs in a manure sample from a horse. And we divide them into kind of a grouping of low, medium or high. And so a low shedding horse would have less than 200 EPG stands for eggs per gram of feces. A medium shedder is 200 to 500 eggs per gram and a high shedding horse has more than 500 eggs per gram in their fecal material. Now I want you guys to know these numbers that are up here are a little bit arbitrary. They're the best numbers we have to utilize right now for what designates low, medium and high. But that research is still being done. A lot of this is new recommendations that are coming more and more. Frequently we're seeing more and more research on this. And so I think these numbers may get tweaked a little, but they're the best we have at the current time. It's also important to know that when you do these evaluations of your manure, it's best to do it for that first look when all effects of a deworming agent are gone. And so you want that deworming agent to be have been metabolized and the horse to show its true parasitic burden. So moxidectin and ivermectin are two common deworming agents and you need to do your parasite evaluation of manure at least 12 to 16 weeks after you've dewormed your horse, the little less for some of the other agents. And why do we use these fecal egg counts? And that's because we use it to determine the shedding status of an individual horse. So we talked about that low, medium and high shedders. But we know that only 15 to 30% of horses are the ones that are responsible for shedding at approximately 80% of all the parasite eggs into the environment. So some horses are very prolific parasite shedders and some really aren't a problem at all. And we also know that horses tend to stay in their categories. So horses that are low shedders tend to stay as low shedders where horses that are high shedders tend to stay as high shedders. And so we can manage them within that grouping and only treat the horses that we need to. We can also use fecal egg counts to evaluate how well our deworming programs working are the agents we're using actually getting rid of the parasite eggs. And are we doing it frequently enough? And then we also can evaluate the types of parasites that are present. This is especially important in our young animals. If you remember I said ascrids or roundworms tend to be a big problem in our young horses and we can differentiate the ascrid eggs from the strontial eggs and use the appropriate deworming agent. There are some limitations of fecal egg counts. It won't detect larvae. So it detects eggs in the feces which come from adults. So it isn't going to detect some of the larval stages if a horse has that and those, especially some of those that are migrating through the horse's body. It also does not adequately address tapeworm or pinworm infections. So the way tapeworm eggs are deposited into the manure, they're not as easy to observe in a fecal egg test. So they have a little, there's a different process for looking for tapeworms. And now there's actually a saliva test that's available. So that definitely shows some promise as well. Pinworms, there's a different procedure other than the manure sampling to look for those eggs. So what does this targeted deworming look like? So this table, the left hand column is the fecal egg count categories. Okay, so our low shedders in yellow less than 200 eggs per gram, our moderate shedders in orange, the 200 to 500 eggs per gram, and our high shedders, the greater than 500 eggs per gram. And then the far right column shows what the deworming protocol might look like. So our low shedders may only need to be dewormed once or maybe twice per year. And so an example would be the spring and the fall. Our moderate shedders may need to be dewormed two to three times per year. For example, spring, summer and fall. And those high shedders may need to get dewormed four times per year. So all seasons they may be getting a deworming agent. So those fecal egg counts are performed once to twice per year depending on how the level of shedding of that horse. So you need to work closely with your veterinarian, your expansion personnel to help determine kind of when your horses need to be tested, what parasites are showing up in those fecal egg counts, and how you can target then based on the life cycle of that specific parasite, which time or season of the year works best for that animal. The other big question is, which product should I use? There's a ton of deworming agents available and they're not all equal. So this is a big graph. There's a lot of info here. And basically, the left far left hand column is the active ingredient. The left column are the name brands that we're most familiar with, and they're not all on there. So there's some generic forms of these active ingredients available. But these were the common name brands that I think a lot of people see in the stores or online to order from. So the following that are the columns with the different parasites that we've talked about. An X in the box or an X in the column shows that that active ingredient is effective against that parasite. Okay, you'll see some like if we look at the first two rows, ivermectin and moxidectin. We look across that there's an X in every box except tapeworms. And moxidectin are effective against all of the parasites that we talked about except tapeworms. But you'll notice I've got a mark that there's some resistance starting to show up for aspirids. So in young horses where aspirids can be a problem, those might not be the best agents to use because we have others that are more effective against aspirids. You'll also note if you look at small strongiles, so that's the fourth, one, two, three, four, fifth column over. There's a little asterisk there. If you look at the asterisk under moxidectin, which is the second row and fenbendazole, which is the third row. So that little asterisk for small strongiles, those deworming agents will get the ones that insist or make the cysts into the tissue in the small intestine. So that is the panicure, the fenbendazole power pack. So that's not just the normal one tube, that's the power pack dose, or moxidectin will get those insisted small strongiles. So as you look through this chart, I'm not going to go through each one individually, but you can see that the column for bots. There's only two agents, two deworming agents that will get bots, which is ivermectin and moxidectin, and then there is only three options for tapeworms. So pyrantle pomoate, which is strongid, but it's only at the double dose. So just one normal tube doesn't work for tapeworms, the double dose will. And then we have some combination drugs, the last two column or the last two rows, ivermectin and prosaquantil or moxidectin and prosaquantil. That combination, that addition of prosaquantil drug is what will kill tapeworms. And so that's the difference between just the basic ivermectin or the ivermectin plus prosaquantil. So sometimes you get the name. If we look at the moxidectin one, so just plain moxidectin the trade name is quest, but moxidectin plus prosaquantil is quest plus. And so it's only that quest plus that will get the tapeworms. All right, I've just given you a whole lot of information in a short amount of time. Now I'm going to switch to my next slide. Oh, there we go. But the big take home I want you to leave with is really when we're talking about deworming horses now we want to make those individualized decisions so using fecal egg counts to make informed decisions and individualized approaches. Our old horses are young horses and our mature horses in the middle don't need to all be treated the same and every mature horse doesn't need to be treated the same. And then it's very important we use the correct deworming product to target the problem parasites, because there isn't one that is perfect for all of our parasites that infect our horses so we need to use the correct one. And then the most important thing that isn't on here, but is to make sure that you dose the horses appropriately for their body weight. So you need to make sure you read the tube of dewormer correctly or if you're using a pelleted dewormer make sure that that is addressed correctly make sure you know the weight of your horse and there's different ways to do that with body tapes and measurements if you don't have a scale. Because if you underdose the horse, you're not going to be able to treat that horse appropriately. And also, if you overdose the horse there are certain deworming agents that can be toxic at high levels and especially in our young horses we've got to be really careful with them. All right, with that I will pass it on to Rachel. Okay just real quick carry there was one question in the Q&A. Mindy had mentioned, can any vet clinic do fecals and guide me to use a proper warmer. I had mentioned and I want you to add in if anything, yes most vet clinics, yes most or all vet clinics are set up to do fecals and they should be able to identify parasites in the system and recommend a dewormer for your horses load. Yes that's true even you know even if you don't you know some veterinary clinics are geared more towards small animal than equine. The small animal clinics are still running fecals on almost all of their small animals and the procedure is very very similar for the equine fecals. So they should at least be able to give you an idea in terms of eggs that are there, but if they're not comfortable making recommendations. There are other veterinarians that I'm sure they would point you to. So yes, and fecal egg count that procedure is not that difficult. There are some good webinars online. You do need a microscope but a cheap Amazon kids microscope works great. You do have large numbers of horses people that have big farms. I'm really in favor of teaching them to be able to kind of look for those parasite eggs and do those counts themselves. Okay, and then we have one more question. When should falls be dewormed for the first time. That is a great question. And I usually one of the big things is making sure mom is dewormed before falling. So I say at least two weeks before falling but no later than a month before falling. So you got a little bit of guess there based on when you think she's going to fall. And then you can start deworming them at 30 days of age. If there's a real problem if you've got a really heavy parasite burden. We can play with some earlier deworming dates to, but the American Association of equine practitioners has some great schedules and some deworming suggestions for young foals as well. I had one question come in through Facebook and the question was, do vet clinics do these fecal egg counts exams in house or these tests in house and they ship them off to a lab. Most should do them in house. I'm not going to say that all will but most should do them in house. So we'll move on to collecting a sample. So real quick, I'm going to talk about how to collect the proper sample for taking into your vet clinic so if you're not there already for an appointment. And you, you're wondering how your your horse's parasite load is. I'm going to hopefully be able to teach you real quick, an easy way to pick up a sample. When we're looking for a sample, we want a fresh sample. So as fresh as you can get it, ideally, if you want to go and put your horse in the trailer, the first thing they do is poop, take that sample. That's, that's the easiest way to get it. Try to make sure it's a clean sample and I say clean sample because of course it's going to be on the ground. So as least the least dirt as possible or bedding or hey that they may have ground into it. Try and take that out. Make sure you get just the fecal. And then if you're not going to be using it refrigerated immediately. So that moves to my another point, if you're going to be putting this into your refrigerator, make sure you double bag it and label it because it nothing scares a husband more than somebody who comes in. Looking for a sandwich and ends up with bag full poo in their hand. So I I'll show you a video here in a second of how I collect a sample. But when you label it label it with the horse's name and age. That way the vet clinic, if they've seen your horses before we'll be able to look them up in their site or in their system really easily. And then also put the day you collected it because if if that is too old they may request another sample. So that they can get the best look at the parasite load there. Move this out of the way. So real quick here is We found our first sample. I've got two bags. I'm going to take one and sometimes I just take the glove over top. Sorry about that. So at the end where we kind of missed a little bit of it. It wasn't much just making sure that you get a representative sample of the the feces that is there. I use two bags. So when I put over a glove tanned, and I kind of picked through the poop pile to find find what was clean and what was good. So that would be a representative sample throughout grab to hold to that inverted the bag and then I also took the glove over top as well. So that would be considered a double bag or putting it into the next bag to to label it, and then you'll be able to take it right into your vet clinic. Usually I like to give them a call beforehand and say hey I'm coming in with a poop sample. Hopefully you've got some time to deal with it today or tomorrow. I'm going to get it in and and most of the time the vet clinics are really it's something real easy that can be done takes about 15 to 30 minutes. When they have time so that's that's usually what I have going through there and then they can recommend what drug to use for the load that you have so that's the nice little thing about it. So that was my quick video on how to collect poop today. Hope you guys really enjoyed it, and we'll move on to page. Rachel just one quick question for you as we're transitioning to page. What do I label the bag as is there anything specific and it needs to say or is that just for you was it for the lab. What does that say. So for as you're labeling it. The reason I want you to put your horse's name on there is because that's that's essentially the patient so if you're thinking of in in a hospital setting. You want to have the patient's name. You want to have your name. You want to have the age of the horse the date you collected it and any other pertinent information that may be going on like if you're dropping it off at the vet clinic. If your horse has diarrhea right a little note on their diarrhea or something else that may be related to any symptoms that the horse is having at the moment and the reason why you wanted a sample collected. I'm going to visit just a little bit about external parasites today I'm going to focus mainly on ticks mosquitoes and flies those are some of the most common ones we experience here north Dakota. So why do we want to manage our external parasites, they cause great annoyance and pain to the horse it can result in weight loss, a lot of skin irritation, and then also some extra stress stress to the hoof and the leg from excessive stomping and kicking at at bugs. Another thing to consider is that these insects convector a variety of diseases, and keep in mind that what you see on your horse or around your horse is really a very small fraction of what's in the environment on your farm. So if we look at this picture of this horse that's suffering from quite a bit of face flies. To the right, there's probably over 100 on that horse right now, but keep in mind that there'd be thousands surrounding that horse and in the environment. So general management practices are listed here and we'll talk about some of these in a little bit more detail. Remember that these are most effective if they're used in a combination so not one method alone will completely eliminate, but our idea is to our goal is to greatly reduce some of these external parasites. So first and foremost, reducing your manure and managing that manure which Mary will talk about in a little bit is very important, and also managing any standing water or wet areas to the best of your ability. Not a lot you can do if you have a pond or a slew or a stream on your property, but you can eliminate standing water in buckets old tires, basically anything that collects water around your farm. You know weeds and tall grasses mosquitoes and ticks particularly live in these areas. So mowing those using herbicides if appropriate weed eating anything to manage those areas will help. Providing shelter to your animals and horses is is another recommendation. On the right we see a run in shed that has some screens installed and that's even a bigger step up that's going to eliminate or greatly reduce anyway the number of flies and mosquitoes that can come into that area and give your horses a little area of reprieve. There's a variety of insecticides and repellents that will visit about physical barriers that are applied to your horse such as fly boots fly sheets and mass are effective. So you may want to consider feed through IGR supplements and IGR stands for insect growth regulator. These would be essentially insecticides that you feed through your horse that will be present in the manure and will inhibit the larva from developing into mature flies. They can be effective if you don't have neighbors remember that flies can come in from a mile or two away. And so if you have a pasture of cattle or sheep or goats or other horses right across the road from your pasture. Sometimes that won't be quite as effective as if you're more secluded. And then last we'll visit a little bit about traps as well. Tacks aren't always the most effective for wide open spaces, but they can be effective effective in enclosed areas such as smaller barns or tack rooms, where you have a limited amount of adult flies present. So first let's focus on ticks. This is definitely tick season right here in North Dakota right now. And they're at a higher population than previous years because of the wet fall that we had and then also the mild winter. So first check your horse for existing ticks, common areas where they attach or under the tail, the tailbone itself, the base of the main under the jaw, the ears, both in and around the ears, the legs and kind of the utter and sheath and belly area. Sometimes these areas have a little bit thinner skin and the ticks seem to accumulate there. Treat existing bites and actually should go back and say when you're removing these ticks, make sure that you're not squeezing or twisting when you're removing them grass gently but firmly and pull straight out. Don't smother them in Vaseline or other oils or some people say that you should, you know, force them out by using heat or a heat and nail or something like that. So here, old wives tales that we don't recommend. Instead, you want to grab it firmly and pulled gently. And then after you remove that tick, make sure that you kill it. Usually the most effective way is going to be to drop it in a little bit of rubbing alcohol. And that's what they don't go on to reproduce. Treat those existing bites on your horse, they can cause a lot of irritation and seem to be extremely itchy for most horses. So a mile and a septic to treat those areas as recommended. And then imply insecticides to prevent future bites. So a popular method is spot on residual treatments that last for a number of weeks. And there's a multitude of other insecticide sprays that are labeled for tick control. If you can keep your horses out of wooded areas and more excessively tall grasses and then learn about the disease that are transmitted by ticks. So Lyme's is just one of those. There are a few others as well, but educate yourself on some of those risks as well. Next, we're going to talk about category flies known as filth flies and we label them as that because they're attracted to living and reproducing around wet debris. So a lot of times we think of just big manure piles as being a source for them. But even in that picture below with a hay net on a round bale that is going to leave very little waste behind all it takes is a little bit of moisture a little rainfall. And that is a perfect breeding ground for these filth flies. They're split into two different categories. So the house flies don't bite your horse, but they do spread disease and they cause a lot of annoyance. These are the flies that are going to be typically found feeding around your horses face around their eyes and nostrils. And then the biting stable flies. We know when those are around those were we're going to see horses swishing their tails stopping their feet turning their head backs at their sides and a lot of skin twitching, trying to get away from those. They do inflict a lot of pain and they also transmit diseases. So what are some methods let's talk a little bit about insecticides and repellents for managing these filth flies. You have a few different options. There's temporary pyrethromes that are often categorized more as repellents, where the idea behind a repellent is to keep the insects from landing on your horse in the first place. Versus some of the insecticides, such as some residual pyrethroids that actually work to kill the adult insect once they land and come in contact with the insecticide. Whenever we're using the products that we're choosing, make sure that we follow the label directions and test on a small space on your horse first. So some of these horses can be reactive to certain products and it seems like some tend to react to the oil based sprays a little bit more than the water based sprays. So test on a small area and if your horse has a skin reaction, immediately wash that product off with soap and water and try a different product. Another thing I want to point out is that manually applying these sprays oftentimes needs to be done more frequently than most people would like to do, but know that they don't last forever. And some of them that are labeled for residual control won't last if they walk through tall grass and get it washed off or if there's a light rain shower. There are fly control systems that have timed applications. Those might be something that's worthwhile looking into in your facility as well. Another method for managing some of these filth flies is parasitic wasps. These are insects that are harmless to humans. They look like an ant with some wings. And what they do is they feed off of the developing fly pupae in the manure. So this is one method to reduce the population. We'll talk a little bit about traps as well. The sticky traps again, they're going to catch a limited amount of flies. The baited traps, they might look really, really satisfying when you see this gallon jug full of hundreds of flies. But remember that that's just a small, small portion of what's actually in the environment. So again, traps are most effective in enclosed areas, inside barns, inside tack rooms. They're not very effective for outside. The other option is UV electric traps that sometimes will attract primarily biting flies, but occasionally some mosquitoes as well. And then the physical barriers that we talked about before with sheets and fly mass and fly boots are very effective against managing the bites of biting stable flies and out flies. As far as aquatic flies go, we'll talk about horse and deer flies and black flies. And they're called aquatic flies because they breed in standing water or black flies actually will breed in some moving water areas as well. Horse and deer flies are quite large. They can be up to an inch in size, large painful bites, and they're most active during the day. The black flies are out right now. Horse and deer flies will probably be out in North Dakota in another few weeks or into June, but the black flies are very prevalent right now. They look like small little gnats. They target the ears and a little bit on the belly area of the horse too. These also are most active during the day. So as far as managing these insects, try and control stagnant water if you can provide shelter. These are active during the day. So this might be if you're having trouble with horse and deer flies and black flies, maybe providing shelter during the day and turning out at night would be an option. Physical barriers, a fly mask would be very effective from keeping the black flies out of their ears if the fly mask with the ears on it. Make sure that you're first removing the flies from the ears before putting that mask on or you're essentially trapping those bugs inside. Insecticides in the form of sprays are common in oftentimes in the ear. We can apply creams or roll-ons. And then, again, traps are not very effective for these particular aquatic flies. Let's talk about mosquitoes next. As the previous ones said, if you can remove standing stagnant water, that's where mosquitoes are going to be breeding and reproducing. There are a number of fog sprays and larvasides that sometimes are more effective on mosquitoes than other insects. Larvasides particularly can be spread into stagnant breeding grounds. So again, if you have ponds or slews on your property, this may be a good option to look into. Provide extra protection when mosquitoes are most active, and that's going to be dawn to dusk. So if you have a larger mosquito issue, maybe you want to provide shelter or stall your horses at night instead. Tall grass is going to be more troublesome. So even during the day, mosquitoes can be a problem because they're sheltering in tall grass and in shaded areas. So if your horses are grazing those areas, mow the grass would be one option to reduce the mosquito load. And then keep in mind that mosquitoes are vectors of West Nile virus and also Eastern and Western equine encephalitis. So visit with your veterinarian to make sure that your horse is vaccinated and protected against some of those diseases. The last thing I want to visit with you about is the importance of rotating your insecticide groups. So sometimes we find a fly spray or insecticide that's really effective and we want to continue to use it time after time, year after year. Keep in mind that on this chart here we have a list of some residual surface sprays that we can apply to fly resting areas like the ceilings or fences or sides of barns. And there's actually five different products here, but they cover only three different insecticide groups. I hope that the first three are all categorized in group number three of the insecticide group number, whereas the fourth one is a group number five and the fifth one is a group number one. So the point I want to make is that even if you're switching between the first three products, you're essentially still using the same type of insecticide, and that can develop some resistance to these products. So it's a good idea to rotate your insecticide groups when you're applying these on your properties. And a more complete list of these insecticides as well as not just these residual surface sprays but also the other types of insecticides we talked about today can be found in the AAP external parasite and vector control guidelines. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mary Keena. She is our livestock environmental management specialist and she's going to talk about the very important thing of managing manure because if we don't manage our manure, all of these other methods to control parasites are going to be more challenging. In the effort of time, we are going to fly through this manure stuff, but I'm okay with that because we already did a whole webinar on manure. That was the first one we came out of the box with. So we're going to talk really quickly about manure. Okay, why manage manure? Miner contains valuable nutrients. That's what I like to tell you. I'm going to tell you that because I don't want you to pollute our water. However, you guys are more concerned with flies, bacteria, internal parasites, all of those types of things. So while I'm concerned about it from a fertilizer and a pollution standpoint, you guys are concerned about it from how the heck do we keep these flies away from our horses, our animals. Okay, so we went over all of these rules in the very first webinar, which of course is going to be, it's already at the end of this presentation, and it's going to be noted again when we do the resources. So stacking areas and stockpiling areas, there's short term and there's long term depending on what state you're in. And so that's just something that you have to keep in mind depending on what your regulations are. What are the term limits for short term and long term stacking areas. And I'm more so bring this up because where do you want to put the stacking areas. We want them to be someplace where we don't have sandy soils because those are rapidly permeable so that means that the nutrients will just move right through that profile. However, we also want to keep in mind that if we have it, you're saying, well, this clay area is the only place I have, but it also happens to be in the pen with the horses in the same pasture in the paddock in our surface or sacrifice area. Then we want to reevaluate how we're doing that because closeness of manure does have a correlation with where and how many flies we're going to have and potentially how many parasites. So we just want to really think about before you just go and put your manner in any place where is the best place for that manner. Okay, so how do parasites move. So there's an egg to the manure. We have then it goes into the effect infective larvae in the feces so during the feces it kind of develops in there. We move that manner to pasture because of course I tell you to spread it because it's a fertilizer and then the horses go out there and they ingest that they ingest those larvae which are then on the plants and then we have eggs and manure again. So you could think about it as no manure equals no infection. And so there are some bigger stables. I just learned this last night. I was so amazed. People vacuum their pastures, you guys, maybe some of you do. I don't know. But back in the day, this was a very popular thing. You vacuumed the manure out of your pasture because no manure equals no infection. But that's not really practical for all of us. And so how can we practically get rid of these parasites while still managing our manure because it is still a really good product from a fertilizer standpoint. So environmental conditions. When we have moderate temperatures and moisture. So I'm thinking spring probably like right now, moderate temperatures moisture. We have really good growth conditions for these parasites. However, cold slows it down. That's an advantage to living here and excessive heat, which we do get eventually in the summer kills some of these eggs and larvae but not just excessive heat from the sunshine. The neat thing is excessive heat can also come from composting. So if you have no other reason to compost your manure for all the other reasons I told you in the first webinar. Maybe you want to do it to kill some of these parasite eggs. So parasite eggs. It's looking like see if I can switch forward here. There we go. So 104 degrees Fahrenheit is no development at this level that's too hot. That's where we start to kill these eggs. Which the neat thing is when we're composting we're getting up to 130 to 150 degrees. So we're not just effectively composting our manure and killing other pathogens and weed seeds. We're also effectively killing our parasites. So that is an advantage to composting. I put the basis of composting in here which I am not going to go through because we already went through that in the first webinar so we are going to skip this. So essentially what I want to tell you is how do we manage how do we manage past companies so composting is one way we can contain that manner we talked about sacrifice or dry lot areas last week. Another way is to collect that manner. So if they're in short runs we can collect it if they're out in the pasture some people will go out and collect that manure out of the pasture. So we collect it put it all in one pile and compost it to kill those issues. Something that somebody had asked okay so I'm telling you to collect your manure and then some people have fresh manure and they're like we don't want to compost it Mary. Not not for us, but we want to hero or drag our pastures from you call it harrowing some of you call it dragging. Okay so what's your environmental situation. Are you warm and moist because if you're warm and moist and then you go and drag this manure all over the place and it's infected. We have just infected our entire pasture area where animals are going to be however if you have if you drag it and you have the ability to not be out there for two weeks not turn those animals out and it's hot outside and it's dry. We're going to kill the infective stage larva. So it depends, which is our least favorite thing to tell you but it's almost our it's the best answer we can get without being at your place so it really depends is dragging good or bad depends on your environmental situation. Okay, and so just a couple a couple things here so remove daily from remove your manure daily from your stalls your run in areas weekly from pastures or paddocks. If you're going to that fresh manure just be cognizant of where you're rotating your. We also have to rotate our the medicine that we're giving our animals we also have to rotate our pastures to make sure that we are doing the best management of we use all. But just one of the tools that each talked about is going to get us the least effective way to manage these parasites page has talked about keeping the water areas kind of clean or trying to keep water down. So we want to make sure that's something to whether that's flies and the manure isn't just parasites internal parasites it's external parasites as well. And so that's something that we want to keep in mind is we have not only the internal parasites growing a mirror but external ones too. Telltale science of infestation this is something care. Dr. Carrie hammer is our director for the equine sciences program at NDSU and so we appreciate her being on here today. Understand what fecal egg counts are used for and how to collect a sample. And so Rachel from our Rachel wall from McHenry County she's one of our extension agents she talked about collecting that sample and how to do that properly and where to send that to parasite prevention program and so that can be with your local veterinarian you can also do that using some resources online but it's the point to whoever you're going to work with to connect with them let them know what kind of animals you have what ages they are and what your environment looks like page from in our word county extension agent talked about implementing fly control. Mosquito control basically any kind of biting insect issues and then think about where your manure stacking area is. So we're going to compost manure rather than spread it on the field where horses graze that's ideally what I would like you to do. And I'm Mary Keena livestock environmental management extension specialist out of the current RC. So with that, I think we are done for the day. But we have some questions did you guys go through you want to go through what whatever questions you answered. Yeah. So in the Q&A chat box I did have a how effective or helpful are guineas and other birds when it comes to managing these insects. Page I did answer but I would like you to fill in as well. There are hunters of ticks, beetles, fleas and grasshoppers mainly so those would be the ones that they would they would target other external parasites such as flies and mosquitoes are in such large numbers that controlling them just with a bird species isn't usually effective but may help. The most common bird that I've seen that eats flies and mosquitoes that are usually around our barn swallows and sometimes they themselves turn into a new sense. Is there anything else that you were thinking of. So that's very good points. Just keep in mind too that the the manure that the chickens produce can also be a breeding ground for some of these insects as well so well they can be helpful. You just kind of have to balance it out. So I agree with what you said thanks Rachel. So there was one question that I kind of thought of for Carrie, Carrie if you want to unmute yourself real quick. So what would, if you're a horse, if you're a horse owner and you go and get your horse tested for all of these worms. When you talk about power packs what would, what would say what kind of situation to use a power pack in. That's a good question. The Panicure power pack that's kind of their little trade name. Is there way of being able to target the insisted small strong aisles. So if you know that you have a strong trial problem. Then I would consider using that power pack. You know if you've just got an Ascorid problem the roundworm problem then you probably don't need to use the power pack just the basic panicure itself would be fine. So these resources that are on here. I post them as well online when I post the video, and if you are on this webinar you are getting our emails and so you'll get that link if you're on Facebook, and you're curious about the link you have on the email. And I will, I'll get you registered so that you can receive the email that has the recording as well as the Q&A and all the resources in there. So with that, unless there are other questions coming in that I haven't seen ladies. I think we will end there. I just want to let you know that we are having our last spring horse webinar on June 3. It's a noon central time back here again, you can register already so that is up and ready to go we're going to talk about biosecurity and horse immunity. And so we're going to just talk things about what what's happening for summer where you go on and how can we be safe and keep our horses safe and healthy. And so you can register by going to tinyorl.com slash NDSU horse biosecurity 2020. And with that, I think we'll end. Thank you guys so much for joining us today. Thanks guys.