Farm Animals

One of our dedicated farm vets is on hand for emergency situations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! Just contact us on the normal number and select the emergency option. We will be with you as quickly as possible to deliver our high quality service when you need us the most!

These visits (usually fortnightly or monthly) can be an integral part of your herd’s health. Benefits include early pregnancy detection (using our state of the art, portable ultrasound scanners), diagnosis of infertility, and identifying potential herd health issues. We work closely with you to tailor a specific management plan for your farm, and therefore maximise your profitability.

TB testing is an unfortunate necessity and forms a large part of farm animal work. Our farm team are all experienced TB testers, regularly performing whole herd and pre-movement tests. Please note that since TB testing has been outsourced to the delivery partners (XL Vets in England and Menter a Busnes in Wales), we are unfortunately no longer able to split tests across multiple days.

Herd/flock health plans are a detailed written plan for all aspects of herd management, to help maximise efficiency and productivity.

These are a requirement for many farm assurance schemes and need to be updated annually.

Disease free accreditation schemes (such as BVD and Johne’s in cattle, and Maedi-Visna in sheep) can form part of this plan and give you the opportunity to officially declare your herd free of specific diseases.

Abortion outbreaks can be devastating in both sheep and cattle.

The most effective way to definitively diagnose the cause is with fresh samples of aborted material (foetus and placenta). Please let us know if you have material to test and we can arrange for it to be dropped off in the surgery or taken directly to APHA Shrewsbury.

The fertility of your bull or ram is vital to your farm’s productivity- a sub-fertile animal can result in significant financial implications and a lot of stress!

We strongly advise that all bulls and rams have a fertility examination annually, at least one month prior to running with cows/ewes.

This includes a general health check, lameness and foot assessment, examination of penis and testes, and semen analysis.

Worm resistance to traditional wormers is a growing problem in livestock.

By performing worm egg counts on faecal samples, we can devise a more calculated and effective approach to worming. This means that you will not waste time and money on unnecessary worming and will reduce the likelihood of anthelmintic resistance in your herd/flock.

There are many different viruses and bacteria that can cause pneumonia, which will often not respond to antibiotic treatment.

Blood sampling, swabs and/or bronchoalveolar lavage (a method to acquire a fluid sample from the airway) can be used to determine the main cause of pneumonia and, together with a review of your housing and management, we can then form a suitable treatment strategy.

Scouring in calves can result in large losses in growth and production.

We can send scour samples to the lab in order to check for infectious causes, and then help you to set up a good colostrum policy which can dramatically reduce numbers of scouring calves.

As part of our monitoring, we can take blood samples to assess antibody levels- a direct measure of how effective your colostrum policy is.

A ram vasectomy is a short and simple procedure performed at the surgery to produce a non-fertile, “teaser” ram, which can be used to stimulate oestrus in a group of ewes.

The benefit of this is a compact lambing period, reducing labour costs and improving some areas of management.

Mastitis and high somatic cell counts are estimated to cost the UK dairy industry £168 million a year. One of the main risks in spreading contagious mastitis is during milking.

With a visit to observe your parlour routine and inspect the milking equipment, we can help to devise a milking protocol to reduce the incidence of mastitis and reduce your bulk milk cell count.