Horses today are living longer. An article from EquiSearch (www.equisearch.com) gives information in regards to five areas that you can help your horse live a long healthy life.

5 Ways to Help Your Horse Live Longer starts out by describing a study done by Tufts University which was a survey done of over 600 horses. What was discovered leads to these five areas that you need to manage in order to have a healthy long living horse.

Sounds familiar to what I have been saying for years, add a couple of other areas such as Tack Fit and Farriery and you have all the categories you need to improve movement in your horse as well.

Now I will have to say that this article is more inclined to the traditional veterinary medicine in the area of parasite control but other than that the article is a great review of what a whole health outlook can do for your horse.

Personally I would avoid deworming products unless necessary, however, you definitely need to check fecal samples many more times than 2 times a year. For the best care of your horse I would suggest monthly or every other month fecal checks. If your horse is positive for parasites then give a deworming product and recheck the fecal sample two weeks later. There are companies that specialize in fecal checks. You just send them the sample and they run the test at a very reasonable cost. Such as Horsemen’s Laboratory (http://horsemenslab.com)