:UPDATE: just gave them gave them a dewormer, my breeder told me to buy this dewormer that is for horses and then I only give them a serving size of a limabean.
For anyone reading, this is an extremely outdated and potentially dangerous method of deworming, and I wish breeders would stop recommending "horse paste" to each other.
1) A "lima bean" (or "pea sized", as most breeders recommend) amount is not a method of dosing. You have no idea if you're under or overdosing your animals. The horse dewormer is designed to give to a 1,000+ lb animal, and even just giving a small amount of the paste could easily overdose and kill your rabbit.
2) The horse paste is designed to be given to a horse all at once; the medication is not mixed evenly throughout the paste. This means that even if you were to do the math and determine how much of the paste would be needed to worm a rabbit, you can never come up with the correct amount.
3) Parasitic resistance is a huge issue in livestock, and when breeders are not responsible with their worming medications and dosage procedures, it adds to the resistance problem. If you want to dose with Ivermectin (what I'm assuming is the active medication in your horse dewormer), you need to purchase a bottle of the 1% Ivomec injection for livestock and give 0.018 ml/lb orally or subcutaneously. This means you need to actually weigh each rabbit and do the correct math for each animal to determine the correct dosage.
4) While Ivermectin is helpful in treating external parasites (mites), it doesn't treat many internal parasites in rabbits, including pin worms. If you think you are having a problem with internal parasites, you need to gather fresh fecal samples and have your veterinarian do a fecal flotation. It's important to identify the species BEFORE you treat, so that you can choose the correct treatment.
5) My rabbits go to shows, play in the grass in backyard, use litter boxes, and eat herbs unwashed out of the garden. Never have I had a positive fecal test show up among any of my rabbits, and the condition on my show animals is usually a non-issue. Intestinal parasites are simply not common in rabbits, especially in ones that are kept in wire-bottom cages as opposed to outside on the ground, and if you're experiencing a problem with flesh condition, it's likely there are other factors at play. Feed, weather conditions, underlying illnesses, and genetics (HUGE factor that most people don't pay attention to!) are more likely to be the culprit.
I'll go ahead and step off my soap box now, but please keep in mind that as breeders it's our responsibility to be educated on rabbit husbandry and proper animal care. Giving out medications without a proper diagnosis or dosage is is absolutely a recipe for disaster, and a primary reason there are so many issues with antibiotic and parasitic resistance in livestock.
:rant:
