Beef

As well as a traditional emergency care we will work with you proactively to prevent problems and keep your beef herd fit, healthy and profitable.

Fertility

Good fertility is vital for good suckler herd fertility. The most efficient herds wean 95 calves per 100 cows that go to the bull each year, so is very important that your cows get in calf. Treating cows that have calving problems or infections, getting late calving cows cycling and checking that cows are in calf are all important to productivity. We provide an on-farm fertility service and can help analyse your herd records to monitor and improve fertility.

Bull fertility

Infertile and sub-fertile bulls disrupt calving patterns and reduce calf output. We can semen test bulls to the BCVA approved standard before you buy, or use them to help prevent the barren cows and extended calving patterns that subfertile bulls can cause. More bull buyers are asking for bulls to be tested and insurance companies are insisting on a test before offering infertility cover.

Herd health

Trying proactively to avoid problems is vital to improving performance. By working with you to analyse herd performance and disease levels, and deciding on future targets we can help you to have the healthiest, most productive herd possible. Worm and fluke control, infectious disease control including vaccination programmes, trace element testing and calf health are all vital components of suckler herd health and we are happy to advise on all these areas, as well as preparing herd health plans for farm assurance schemes. We also stock a wide range of worming and fluke products and by testing dung samples from your herd in our in-house laboratory we can give prompt advice about treatment.

Foot trimming

The practice employs a full-time professional cattle foot trimmer with an electric hydraulic crush. Gareth Foye is an experienced trimmer fully trained in the Dutch five step method and he holds the National Association of Cattle Foot Trimmers Diploma. He is available on a day or half day basis for regular farm customers and can trim smaller numbers of cattle on an ad-hoc basis.

Foot trimming is recorded with our own on-farm software and Gareth produces reports for the vets on the farms where he regularly trims. We also provide a mobility scoring service for monitoring foot health or farm assurance purposes.