Farm Animal dairy services across Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.
Our priority is to maximise your herd’s productivity, health and welfare. Disease prevalence is actively monitored and allows us to identify areas where performance is on track or where improvements could be made.
We frequently undertake in depth mastitis investigations for our farmers, creating an action plan tailored to the individual farm.
We are able to offer a service where we assess the vacuum function of the parlour during a milking. See Dynamic Testing of Milking Parlours.
For herds who are milk recording, we produce reports following each recording to summarise your herd’s production, SCC and fertility data. We use these on farm to stimulate discussion about individual cows, group and herd performance. All our vets are competent users of Uniform, Interherd+ and Total Vet.
All our vets have a keen interest in Dairy fertility work. Our vets all use ultrasound scanners. We also have four team members who have achieved further qualifications in this area, with master’s degrees in the Diploma of Bovine Reproduction (DBR).
To ensure a high level of continuity every farm will be teamed up with at least two dedicated dairy vets who will perform your routine fertility work on a regular basis. We will tailor our service to your specific needs, and provide both weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or seasonal visits depending on your system requirements. Maximising fertility is paramount, and analysis of performance data is available monthly for all-year-round systems. We have developed our own block calving fertility reports that are available annually for these seasonal systems.
Other fertility services include group synchronisation packages, heifer breeding audits, genomic testing, and AI services.
We have a team of experienced vets who regularly carry out bull fertility testing examinations. We encourage the use of this service before using any bull on your stock to ensure he is fit for purpose. This service may be required for pre-purchase, pre-sale, or pre-breeding. We advise annual reexamination to ensure that your stock bull remains fertile year-on-year.
The testing involves a full physical examination, to assess the bull’s body condition, vision, locomotion, general health, and reproductive health. The bull’s fertility is also assessed by examining a semen sample, collected following electroejaculation. Both the general appearance, motility and morphology of the sample will be graded. All bulls will receive a certificate detailing whether they have passed or failed the assessment.
Friars Moor Livestsock Health’s team of professional Foot Trimmers, Vet Technicians, Vets and support staff work together to provide the highest level of service to our farmers. The team is equipped with the latest foot trimming equipment to provide a professional and efficient service to both dairy and beef clients. Lameness data is collected crush-side, using the latest Vet Impress technology to provide detailed insights into the causes of lameness on those farms. This holistic approach to lameness control, has reaped huge benefits for lameness reduction and control on many of our farms.
Successful feeding of a herd or flock works well when all members of the farm team work together. We work closely with nutritionists and consultants, communicating results and observations regularly as well as meeting up together on farm to review herd performance and plan for the coming months. Metabolic profiles, liver biopsies, rumen sampling and urine sampling can all be used when diagnostics are required to investigate nutritional issues. Our vet technicians offer body condition scoring which is a useful monitoring tool.
Gaining health status accreditation involves regular blood sampling of stock to monitor freedom from a particular disease, together with agreeing a health plan to ensure that high health status is maintained. As your vets, we see it as a great opportunity to maximise your biosecurity, improve productivity and add value to your stock. We work with the national provider Premium Cattle Health Schemes and Sheep and Goat Health Schemes.
We regularly carry out castrations and other routine surgeries either at the practice or out on farm.
We are happy to disbud goats on farm or in the surgery. We also perform routine surgeries including castration.
All our vets are enthusiastic and dedicated farm vets. We provide our own 24-hour emergency service always with a smile on our faces!
Our practice firmly believes that appropriately targeted post-mortem investigation can be a very valuable and quite economic tool for informing herd health and farm management decisions.
We have a dedicated post-mortem room at the Sturminster surgery where we can perform economic sheep/goat, poultry/game bird or cattle youngstock post-mortems. We can also perform post-mortem investigation on smaller animals (sheep/goats/calves) on farm if this is more convenient.
For adult cattle post-mortem investigations, we generally advise that these are carried out either at a fallen stock centre such as SecAnim or at the hunt kennels as a thorough investigation on farm is rarely possible.
All post-mortems should be performed as promptly after death as is practical.
Our in-house laboratory offers worm egg and coccidia counts, milk sample culture and somatic cell count testing, haematology, biochemistry and investigation of external parasites.
We use disease prevalence data, ventilation and humidity measurements and an overall assessment of how existing buildings work to suggest practical solutions to improve the health of your housed stock.
When designing new buildings, you will get the best results when you discuss your ideas with your entire advisory team, including your dedicated farm vet.
Our vets are APHA approved to carry out both TB and export testing on your farm.
Farm animal veterinary care and advice, 365 days a year.
Local and highly experienced expert veterinary team.
Over 65 years of service to the local farming community.
Courses and events to help share knowledge & best practices.
Branches across Dorset and drug collection in Sherborne.
Highly experienced team of vets dedicated to your specific needs.
