How to Safely and Effectively Give Paste Dewormer to Your Horse

Establishing a regular horse deworming schedule is important to rid horses of internal parasites. While regularly deworming your horse is important, and paste dewormer is a popular form of horse dewormer, the inability to properly administer it will not do much good. We’ve put together this easy-to-use guide to help you give paste dewormer the right way, along with tricks for worming difficult horses.

How to Administer Paste Dewormer

Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to effectively administer paste dewormer to your horse:

1. Safely tie up your horse and make sure their mouth doesn’t contain any feed, which may cause them to spit out the wormer.
2. Turn the knurled ring on the syringe’s plunger a 1/4 turn to the left and slide it to the appropriate prescribed weight marking. (Please note that the dial on some syringes requires you to only spin it to the left or right for the appropriate weight setting.)
3. Turn the ring 1/4 to the right to lock it in place.
4. Remove the cover from the syringe tip. Insert the tip at a 45-degree angle into the corner of your horse’s mouth, where there are no teeth.
5. Depress the plunger all the way in as you wiggle the syringe around the horse’s mouth, spreading the dose of paste across the back of their tongue. Make sure you don’t just deposit a single lump, which they can easily spit out.
6. Immediately after dosing, raise your horse’s head for a few seconds to encourage them to swallow.
7. Make sure the syringe is empty; if any of the dose remains, repeat the above steps.

Tips and Tricks for Using Paste Dewormer

If you find your horse is averse to the medication and tends to shy away from the syringe, coat the outside with applesauce or another treat that they like. Then fill the empty syringe with the applesauce every week or so, giving them the treat just as you would deworm them, so they no longer expects there to be medication inside.

Another trick would be to try the Easy Wormer.  The Easy Wormer is a “bit” with a hollow mouthpiece that you inject the paste into. The paste discharges through the opening in the middle of the mouthpiece and then the paste slides down the horse’s throat. No more wasted dewormer!

When deciding on which horse dewormer to administer, we would like to provide a few options.

Best-Selling Horse Dewormers

Jeffers Ivermectin is a horse dewormer and boticide that controls 46 species and stages of worms and bots, including large and small strongyles, pinworms, hairworms, threadworms, stomach worms, lung worms, and roundworms.

Designed specifically as an equine dewormer, it can be used in horses of all ages and is safe for mares at any stage of pregnancy, as well as fertile stallions. Each syringe contains enough paste to treat a 1,250-pound horse, divided into markings good for 250 pounds of body weight each.

Safe-Guard® Paste Dewormer can be used for horses and cattle. Safe-Guard aids in the control of lungworms, stomach, and intestinal worms. The paste is apple-flavored to be more palatable to animals. One 25-gram tube contains enough medicine to treat a horse up to 1,100 pounds and is also divided into markings at 250 pounds each.

Safe-Guard® Equi-Bits is a pelleted horse dewormer that controls the same species of parasites as the paste. This is a great solution for the horse that is hard to deworm with a tube wormer.

Your choice of dewormer will depend not only on the types of parasites you wish to eliminate but also on how cooperative your horse is. The good news is, following the tips here is sure to yield the best results possible, regardless of the product you end up using.

Jeffers Equine offers a wide variety of horse dewormers. Check out our full selection of equine deworming products to find the one that’s right for your horse.