INTESTINAL WORMS IN HORSES.
—Intestinal worms may be classed as large and small. The large worms inhabit the small intestines, and the small ones the large intestines, the larger class of worms being more readily reached by worm destroyers than are the smaller ones, as the small intestines begin at the stomach and as remedies leave the stomach, the worm soon receives the dose prepared for it, while if one dose has to pass through about 60 feet of intestines before reaching the smaller worms in the larger intestines, much of the worm remedy is lost by mingling with the food, and diluted by mixing with the digestive fluids. Thus what is a remedy for the large species of worms will have little effect upon the smaller ones.
As a farmer’s dose for the larger species of worms, none, perhaps, is better than the following: Oil of turpentine, 2 ounces; extract or oil of male fern, one half ounce, mixed with 4 ounces of castor oil and 8 ounces of pure raw linseed oil, with half a pint of new milk, and given after the horse has fasted for about 14 hours. Repeat the dose in a week; then follow with two worm powders, common smoking tobacco, eight ounces; powdered worm seed, 6 ounces; powdered sulphate of iron, 4 ounces; mix with one-half pound each of salt and granulated sugar. Every morning before the horse is fed any other food, place a heaping tablespoonful of the powder in four quarts of wet wheat bran and allow the horse to eat it; continue for ten days and the horse will be practically rid of worms of the larger species. Colts should receive smaller doses in proportion to age.
The small worms need the worm powder to be given in the wheat bran every morning for fully two weeks. Then follow with an ounce dose of barbadoes aloes and a tablespoonful of ginger given by mixing with about 12 ounces of warm water and a gill of common molasses; wait a week and repeat the powder treatment and follow with the aloes. In a case of the very small or rectal worms (pin worms) always use rectal injections, a good enema being made by steeping for two hours one pound of quassia chips in a gallon of soft water; strain and add two ounces of common hard soap; use the whole at once, using at about blood temperature after the soap has dissolved. Repeat in three days and continue as long as worms are being brought away by the enemas.