Stop Press!

 

Urs and Sabine have now been here for two years; and we're between the summer work and the winter work; and it seems a good time to think over what we have learnt and how we hope to go forward.

Ideas in no particular order...

Urs still has occasional clients asking whether we provide a general practice service or confine ourselves to specialist areas - as it were dentistry, lame horses, vettings and medicine sales. The answer is as always that we do a complete horse and farm veterinary service, and we're looking for more clients.

Some potential clients seem to hold back because we are so much cheaper than others; the feeling is that we must be cutting corners. We're not - we're only cutting overheads. We don't have expensive premises or expensive staff - we do our own drug ordering, stock control, book keeping and equipment cleaning. We don't pay anyone to answer the telephone - you'll get straight through to one of us or our car phone answering machines; and we don't leave them unanswered for very long. And we're on the road by 8am almost every day - ring the standard  "personal number " - 07071 283 100 and you might be surprised at how near we are to you.

As I (Colin) look back on my early years in farm practice it seems to me that I wasted the best years of my life pulling oversized calves out of overfat cows and then propping up the survivors. Things have moved on - Estimated Breeding Values and Condition Scoring have changed the animal end of the equation, and skilled, experienced farmers have changed the human end. The result is that we don't see many calvings or lambings, and the ones that we do see are almost all cesareans. So now, if someone rings and says he needs a cesar we know he's right - and while we drive over he sets everything up for surgery. Then we walk in and operate almost straight away - clean fresh patient + clean fresh vet = very good results.

Worm Egg Counts

Sheila Rushbridge at the Aberdeen SAC lab runs worm scan; simple, straightforward - farmer collects and posts 10 samples, SAC mix the samples and do a worm count which is of course an average. The great saving here is that the samples are often very low in worm eggs - so no need to worm. This saves money and stock disturbance; but most importantly will slow down or even reverse the development of resistent worms. Toby Tennant at Shaws (01450 860634) is a client who has had very good results with this system. He's an enthusiast and he'll explain it to you.