The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Cattle => Topic started by: hampshiresmallholder on March 12, 2019, 09:51:13 pm
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Hi, another question from me, ::)
Is it possible to calculate vet fees etc. What I mean is there a set fee they charge or does it depend on the time of night they might come or whatever and how bad the case is.
I am trying to calculate my costs for bottle calves and have done things like milk replacer, hurdles, hay, straw, and calf nuts, but not sure about the above.
any help gladly received
mt
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If you ask the vet they should tell you what your normal callout fee is, and any other info you need. Callout fees vary according to all sorts of factors, so it’s impossible for us to guess what your vet will charge you. But at our practise at least, it’s something the receptionist can look up on our account and tell us. Presumeably there is also a tariff for out of hours callouts.
Then there may be a consultation fee on top of that, usually a minimum then an hourly rate, plus any meds and prices for various procedures.
I think I might start with an estimate of vet fees being 10% of the overall purchase price of the calves and see how it pans out in practise. Hopefully you will do better than that ;)
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Piece of string. Phone them and ask.
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Piece of string.
yes i thought it would be.
thank you both. i will work on 10% as sally says for now, and see what reality brings. :thinking:
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10% might be okay but a touch of pneumonia or scour would probably be more than that. Budgeting for vets bills is tricky. Some months we have minimum bills, some months we have a lot of visits (beef suckler and a few sheep). One week in the autumn we had 3 vet assisted calvings in a row- no one could have predicted that. We pay for the time vet spends on farm (minimum 20 mins) then an out of hours fee on top if needs be.
Buy healthy, strong calves that have preferably been vaccinated for pneumonia and that would reduce the risk.
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I usually manage to take my animals to the vet, so was fairly shocked at the callout fee for blood testing last year. I will find invoice later, but i think callout was about £35, and hourly rate more.
If vet has a yard to park in, and you can get your animals there, do it. ?
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calves like sheep can be transported to vets so save on call out fee. 10% is probably OK as long as you realise one year it could be 1% and the next 100% !!!
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calves like sheep can be transported to vets so save on call out fee. 10% is probably OK as long as you realise one year it could be 1% and the next 100% !!!
Thank you all
Yes i do realise that. I've learnt to always expect the unexpected :D
the vet i contacted has come back with these core prices. i think they are quite reasonable.
New Client Visit - FREE
• Pre Booked Visit - £24
• Normal Visit - £36
• Out of Hours/Emergency Visit - £48
this is for 20 mins. then they charge for every 10 mins after that.
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Keep in mind that will probably be plus VAT.
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the vet i contacted has come back with these core prices. i think they are quite reasonable.
New Client Visit - FREE
• Pre Booked Visit - £24
• Normal Visit - £36
• Out of Hours/Emergency Visit - £48
this is for 20 mins. then they charge for every 10 mins after that.
And just how do vets go out of business with charges like that? I am so in the wrong job!
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You are Alan! Retrain and go out there and get those £s!!! Easiest cash you will ever make
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You are Alan! Retrain and go out there and get those £s!!! Easiest cash you will ever make
lol no thanks. I'm done with my educational establishments days.
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You are Alan! Retrain and go out there and get those £s!!! Easiest cash you will ever make
:roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim: :roflanim:
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Vet fees, don't cry! In the early 2000's calves were cheaper and i spent £100 On 8 calves. Believe it or not, they were good ones too! Due to lambing, I already had shavings, straw, buckets etc in stock so I figured 8 calves, several bags of milk, nuts, good stock of silage and hay already in, plenty of land, I'm going to make good money, pigs fly!! So, effydral when they 1st got here to settle them down. 3 days in, my problems started. A calf that I called Clementine started to not thrive like the others. 3 vet visits down and I had to call someone out to shoot her. Annoyed, we paid for an autopsy which revealed damage to her throat and stomach lining that could only have been done by misplaced tubes on the original farm. It was suggested that she was doped up to get her through the auction so all would seem fine. We presented the report to the auction and their reply back was that they knew the farmer but couldnt/wouldn't say anything. I even contacted Trading Standards but they too said that their hands were tied! I've bought calves since from other auctions and made A bit of money from them. 1 we put in the freezer,a big Brown Swiss. He was some of the best beef ever! I needed a calf back in 2017 and went to Market Drayton for one but when I was watching, they sent through a calf coughing and sneezing and that put me off, so we contacted the people we bought our cow off and Knickers arrived. Mary came in December and Jennifer, calf number 4 is coming in 2 weeks time. Vet fees i'm afraid are something you have to put up with. I used to have a bottle for everything until I discovered Homeopathy so now sheep and cattle have remedies made with Brandy!! Also, which the vet thought was good, I put homemade yoghurt in the milk replacer. Helps with the gut!
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This last year has been my first year with cows, so I mentally budgeted for vet fees, thinking a call out fee is better than a dead cow/calf.
So from March 2018 I have had a vet 3 times. The local farm vet , was expensive, we are less than four miles from them, but I still got a £35 call out fee, and they were not hands on. Now I use a vet which is further away, part of a big group, the vets are Polish and Romanian, both hands on, very good and patient with me, and even remember my cows.
My biggest bill £190, for disbudding, so I am changing to polled cows.
I think the secret with all animals is paying a bit more to by stock that you know has been cared for properly. I do not think I would by anything from market, travelling causes stress and you can expect to get, 'travel snots', to follow.
I have now been around a few small holdings and some I am afraid to sad to say do not measure up to farmers yards who handle far more cattle. I would be ashamed if mine were stood in a foot of s**t.
I have been surprised how little advice I have been given by other cattle keepers I have met, even though I ask. Very different from horses, where everyone has an opinion. I do not know if this is because I am a women, or because I ask questions, so a lot of what I have learned has come from ADAS, government web sites and forums. Which is a shame. The local small holders group no one seems to keep cattle, so no help from there. I think actually the vets have been well worth their money.
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Wow thanks everyone soo much. Amazing how everyone is so willing to share info on here. :) Yes there's not many who keep cattle or calves for that matter near me either honeyend. Many websites and TAS later.... ;D I finally have some knowledge.
Thanks again
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Two tips and a piece of information:
1. Air flow air flow air flow. There’s nothing more important to cattle than good ventilation. Calves need to be dry - sheltered from rain and with fresh dry bedding to lie on - but a cool breeze will harm them far less than a humid, stagnant environment. The ideal is air flow above head height, which draws the air constantly. So something like a gappy ridge construction, or two open flaps high up at different corners, making a flow across the calves’ area. But an open-fronted area, provided they can always retreat from any rain blowing in, and there is dry bedding there for them, is better than a sheltered inner corner with no air flow. They don’t actually need to be warm per se, as long as they are dry, have plenty of fresh dry straw, and are fed warm milk.
2. Don’t buy calves less than a month old. Generally the ones that are going to die start to be sickly in the first month. If it looks healthy at a month, there’s a good chance it will live. I lived with a third generation cattle farmer. He was in his sixties and had been buying in and rearing calves (alongside his home bred sucklers) since he was 10 years old. He never bought calves at less than a month old, unless they were going onto a freshly-calved cow. And I mean never. I worked with him for nine years and we had just one hand-reared calf die in that time, out of between three and six bought in a year. (Admittedly, once my Jersey was established, we reared them on her, which is even better of course. But he rarely lost them before I came along, and said the two biggest factors were the two tips I’m passing on to you here.)
3. Bottle / teat is better than head down sucking from an open bucket. The farmer I’ve mentioned did use a bucket, but he knew what he was doing and which calves to buy. It just avoids a lot of problems to have them drinking through a teat - although of course you do need to be scrupulous about keeping the teats clean.
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Many, many thanks Sally. Very useful info and tips. I was planning to bottle feed anyway but definitely will do now. Along with adlib timothy hay and I will try that starter before 6 weeks, see if they take it, but if not it will be there from 6 weeks.
2. Don’t buy calves less than a month old.
Tbh I cant find many quality calves that are less than a month. Which is a good thing then ;) Especially beef x dairy which is what I'm primarily after.
Thanks again everyone!!!! and good luck on your holdings :)
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Honeyend, very sorry to hear that with regards to advice. I'm no expert and I've always lived on a small holding with cattle. The ONLY time there were no cattle on the place was from September 2013 through January 2015 and I didn't like it. We'd had to part with the last of our original herd due to being unable to get them into calf and it was 2013 i had a beef done. It was also a very wet winter around here so we were quite relieved at the time, but no cattle on the ground since around the 1920's when my granddad brought the place is a very eerie feeling and it upset mum because she and her dad before her used to milk the cows here. I totally understand the ankle deep! When I said I wanted to get a calf to rear to rebuild the herd i also said that she would be tied in a stall over winter in the very same shippon that mum used to milk in. I know some will probably suck breaths in reading that, but Juniper, Knickers, soon Mary and in time Jennifer don't lie on concrete! They have 6x4 heavy duty cow mats and cameras watching them. Juniper even snores lying flat out. This current winter, due to the mildness, cattle have gone out everyday with inlamb ewes and back in at night. I went to get them in one night and wondered why Juniper was standing strangely. When i got to her i held my breath! She was standing over a ewe that had just lambed. Poor lamb must have wondered what the hairy red lump was! My cattle aren't pure, can't afford that. All polled Herefords off Jersey X Ayrshire cows.
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Just for folk reading this thread, the current Welfare Codes for Cattle for England and Wales state :
57 No matter how long you house the animals, their accommodation should give them shelter and enough room to move around and interact with each other. The accommodation should provide enough space for a subordinate animal to move away from a dominant one. It is important to provide as comfortable an area as possible, so that the animals can lie down for as long as they want and have enough space to stand up again. The floor should not slope too steeply – no more than about 10% - as steeper slopes can cause leg problems, slipping and falling.
69 In cowsheds, the lying area should be big enough to help keep the cows clean and comfortable and to avoid them damaging their joints. You need to untie tethered cows and let them exercise at least once a day and give them feed and water if it is a long exercise period. The animals should also be able to groom themselves when tethered. The cowshed needs to be well ventilated.
So at present it is not illegal to tether cattle over winter, but they must be untied and allowed to exercise at least once a day, and they must be able to groom themselves while tethered.
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Personal digs! Blimey! I did state that they had cameras! Not only that but vets have seen them and if you had read my post you would have read how they went out all day! I may have land but we've done for decades out wintering cattle and though I agree with it, I'm now at the stage that I have no help which means when the tractor gets stuck in the field feeding silage it will have to stay there all winter and I can't afford to do that, so if tying a suckler cow up in a stall for 3 months to save the ground, getting cleaned out minimum twice a day, then so be it. Also, at least my method is clean! I suggest you post an article relating deep bedding! Some farmers may be clean, but I know several big farmers in my area that despite straw on straw on straw, cattle are up to their knees in muck. They are the ones that have no hair from their knees down due to scold from the pee and muck!
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I think working farmers get a lot of stick on welfare standards, and sometimes there is the perception that small is beautiful, where as I think if you have poor welfare standards it doesn't matter how big you are its no excuse.
One year I delivered some hay that had become damp to an 'animal sanctuary', it was not wet through but I dare not feed it to ponies, so I was donating for sheep. We delivered the sanctuary and no word of a lie they were stood on there feet of manure, the sheep in the front paddock were at eye level. The buildings that must have once been used for horses, the sheep were hitting there head on the cross members of the roof. The person running this charity was saving farm animals from slaughter.
I live on the edge of a flood plain, so often have to cope with mud for many months, but everything has somewhere to lie in the dry and its freshly strawed every day, so it the worst wet its a dry island if they are outside. I have not so happy memories of mucking out into a wheely bin and floating it in dressed in fishermans waders to the muck heap.
When I was young I used to help on a farm that still had the old fashioned stalls, where they tied up working horses on a noggin and chain, they are still used for working horses in London. The horses seemed happy in them, they had food and company and laid down in them with no problems and certainly seemed to have less behavioural issues than an animal cooped up in a 12x 12 on its own.
They were Victorian farm building with high ceilings and bedded cobbled floors, any urine draining in to a drain at the back. When you look at the design of modern dairy housing the ideas uses seem similar , with urine and faeces going into the central passage that's scraped, only now the cows have mats with the bedding in their stalls.
As my barn is not purpose built and they are free housed they have a bedded area well away from the feed and forage which says relatively clean and they are picked out twice a day. I do not like deep litter because it's the devil to shift and our small tractor has no power steering.
As I say I am learning and I was just surprised how some people kept their stock.
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I’ve re-read my post and I see nothing that could be construed as a personal dig. None was intended and I do not believe one has unwittingly been made. I shared some information for the benefit of anyone who might have thought that tethering cattle had been outlawed.
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As always gone right of topic First posted Vet Fees
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
Except when you then get an epidemic...
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As always gone right of topic First posted Vet Fees
I wouldn't say that info on animal welfare is totally unrelated. :thinking:
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
The saying, 'a stitch in time saves nine', describes my attitude. Picking up on small things often prevents a lager more expensive problem, if its £30 call out I would rather be thought a fool.
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
Except when you then get an epidemic...
No different, don't call the vet = no vet bill
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
Except when you then get an epidemic...
No different, don't call the vet = no vet bill
There may come a point when you have no choice - although I suppose you could always call the knacker to put them out of their misery...
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So pay the knacker, but don't moan about his bills, its not his fault your stock became sick and died. Vet bill still nothing so everyone must be happy
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I have a horse who gets a foot abscess roughly once every 2 years and it follows the same pattern every single time - I have a day looking at him walking about in the field thinking, 'Is he slightly lame or is it just that the field's lumpy?', he's then hopping lame the following morning, I load him up on bute to make it more comfortable for him to move and because he's still moving about on it, the pumping action of the frog helps it burst out of his heel within 48 hours. Our vets used to have a rule that they wouldn't prescribe over the phone if they hadn't seen the animal in 2 years. They've now dropped it to 6 months, so when I rang them up in December and asked them for 2 days of bute, they insisted on coming out. That then got cancelled due to an emergency and they gave me 3 days of bute without seeing him that day, but insisted on coming the following morning, where he was inspected, found to have an abscess, poulticed (which goes against what my farrier says, which is don't poultice until it's burst), and then left me with 20 sachets of bute. The abscess burst the following day and he was sound again.
Total bill was £125, of which about £20 was for the bute. They're really taking the mickey. At least I have enough in the cupboard now to cover the next two abscesses!
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I think vets are now having to see animals more regularly to prescribe over the phone/without a consult in order to reduce antibiotic resistance? Our vets don't go much more than a month without coming out for something :innocent:
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Fortunately for me my vet classes me taking something in to him as seeing my animals :) So a ram for a mv blood test taken in a trailer counts as does taking the mule in for its flu vaxination. I think the fact that they have been coming here and know the set up for 50 years helps us with this though.
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Fortunately for me my vet classes me taking something in to him as seeing my animals :)
So he doesnt charge as much you mean?? :thinking:
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Fortunately for me my vet classes me taking something in to him as seeing my animals :)
So he doesnt charge as much you mean?? :thinking:
They have rules they have to follow on prescribing things like antibiotics. Amongst other things, our vet needs to have visited the farm within the preceding twelve months in order to be able to dispense antibiotics without a visit. As they do our TB test, and we’re in an annual testing region, it’s not generally too much of an issue. But in fact I think we probably have them out once or twice a year anyway, and of course we just get them to have a wee look at anyone who’s worrying us when they’re here for the TB anyway ;).
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I will get it back on then; my top tip for keeping vet bills low is don't call the vet
If you want to avoid vets bills, don't have animals!
Vets bills are just part and parcel of good animal welfare. That said, we have also been clobbered by massive costs for scans/testing etc which ultimately proved nothing, only then to see the animal in question jog-on like there was nothing wrong with them and go on to lead a very happy life with no problems what so ever. Bloomin animals! :-\