Horse worming training

With some forward planning, ingenuity and practical strategies, you can administer wormer effectively, safely and with minimal stress for both you and your horse. If a horse has had a negative experience with syringed medication in the past, either through its administration or taste, he may become resistant to future attempts, even if they involve different treatments.

When looking at wormer training, follow these incremental steps.

Step one

Start by holding an empty worming syringe near your horse and when he turns or moves his nose towards it to investigate, praise him and give a tasty food reward.

Step two 

Progress to rewarding him for touching the syringe with his nose, then for nibbling at it and, eventually, for taking the syringe into his mouth. You can try smearing something tasty on the outside of the syringe to encourage him to lick it and open his mouth and, later, once he’s doing that happily, switch to having the tasty treat inside the syringe so he has his reward – apple sauce, custard, molasses – squirted straight inside.

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Try strongly flavoured foods, such as molasses, apple sauce or carrot purée, peppermint or spearmint extract, maple syrup or fenugreek as a treat as this will mask the taste of the wormer.

Once you’ve followed this training and have successfully given him his wormer, you can reinforce the behaviour by continuing to give him a treat via syringe from time to time instead of leaving being given wormer as his last experience of it. By going down this route, you’ll find worming or giving medications by oral syringe never has to be stressful again – and you might even end up with a horse who actively wants to be given his medication.

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Add a variety of flavours to the syringe so he’s not always receiving the same sweet taste. By doing this, when it’s the real thing, he won’t be too surprised that it’s not what he was expecting.