I have kept horses for over forty years, and when I first started there was one book about horse management in the library which I read over and over again, in my attempt to learn the right way to keep a horse.
The basics are the same, but most of the people who wrote those people where ex army, had family money and staff where I was working class, with a field and little but aspirations.
I get so cross because information about animal management is so freely available on the internet, you not need to have money to find it. The novice are ridiculed for being, well novice and yes they really should find this things out before they get the animal, but everyone else makes it looks so easy. The selfie generation hardly ever post their mistakes.
There is a common mistake that the vet is expensive, in my opinion when people with pay £30 to have their nails done every 2ish weeks, which takes 45mins, £35 for a vet to appear is a bargain, even if they say there is nothing wrong.
Now I am going to have a bit of a dig at vets. They have done all that training and are very clever, its harder to become a vet than a doctor, but they are not always the best communicators or the most practical of people. A bit like doctors they come in dispense their wisdom, and leave you scratching your head thinking how on earth do they expect me to do that. Often they need an interpreter. to explain things.
I think like Denplan they should encourage people to pay a yearly fee that entitled you to free 'flock' visits and perhaps discount on treatments, a practice nurse could do the basics, and nip some mistakes/problems in the bud, with a vet follow up for prescribing.
Most of us who have animals and have few problems practice prevention without even knowing it, that knowledge makes things look easy.
