Beef Services
We work closely with beef clients across Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset supporting their farm business to thrive through maximising their health, welfare, and productivity.
Our team offer a comprehensive range of services which are tailored towards your enterprise whether that be beef suckler, rearing or finishing.
A summary of what we offer beef clients
- Fertility: Routine pregnancy diagnosis, pre-breeding examinations, synchronisation programmes.
- Beef herd health planning which includes all veterinary red tractor requirements.
- DEFRA funded Animal health and welfare reviews.
- Veterinary declaration visits to fulfil market requirements for non-red tractor assured farms.
- Infectious disease monitoring control and management including sampling and compliance with CHECS assurance schemes PCHS and Hihealth.
- Nutritional advice including trace element testing.
- Housing and environment assessments.
- TB testing by vets or Approved Tuberculin Testers (ATTs).
- Veterinary led TB Advisory Service (TBAS) visits supporting you to control and reduce TB risk.
- In house postmortem service and lab at Shepton practice offering quick turnaround worm and cocci counts.
- 365 days a year, 24/7 emergency service provided by our own team of vets.
- Bull breeding soundness examination and semen analysis.
- Heifer pre-breeding examinations: Pelvic measuring and reproductive tract scoring.
- Export services: Live animal exports for breeding.
- Support with advanced breeding programs.
Beef suckler fertility services
Fertility is key to the profitability of the suckler herd and therefore optimising this is key to success. The team at Shepton vets understand this need and therefore provide several different services to ensure we meet your herds goals.
- Pre-breeding examinations of late calvers and problem cows to ensure they have the best chance of getting in-calf again.
- Bull breeding soundness examinations to identify sub-fertile and infertile bulls. When carried out in advance of the breeding season this allows for appropriate action to be taken to mitigate the impact of this on the herd.
- Heifer pre-breeding exams: To assess if heifers are cycling properly, assess liveweight, temperament and carry out pelvic measuring to identify those with a small or abnormal pelvic area and remove them from the breeding cohort to reduce the potential risk of dystocia and future poor performance.
- Advise on sire selection: Support with understanding and using EBVs to select for desirable traits for the group of animals which are to be served.
- Synchronisation and AI programmes: Synchronisation programmes designed for fixed time AI to facilitate block serving and maintaining a compact calving blocks as well as reducing the need for heat detection and improve AI timing. AI allows farms to select bulls that are suited for your herds breeding goals without risks and cost associated buying and keeping lots of bulls on farm.
- Support to make the most out of advanced breeding programmes though a holistic approach to herd health.
- Pregnancy diagnosis from 30 days with portable ultrasound scanners.
Beef herd health planning
Beef health planning is delivered by experienced cattle vets and is tailored to your farm type with specific performance monitoring and advice suited to your farm system and goals. All of our herd health plans are fully compliant with the veterinary requirements for red tractor and accredited disease schemes.
Post mortem and lab services
We run an in-house post mortem service for those times when you would like to investigate a death but are unable to get the carcasses to Langford. Rosie leads this service having gained lots of pathology knowledge when she previously worked at an APHA Veterinary Investigation Centre.
Clients benefit from a well-equipped, in house laboratory, that’s able to run a variety of tests quickly. Results will be reported to you by our experienced vets who can give advice on the best treatments.
Medicines
We supply fairly priced medicines to our clients from our large, fully stocked pharmacy in Shepton Mallet. We have daily deliveries meaning we can get anything not in stock within 24 hours. XL Vets membership supports our medicine procurement enabling us to source alternative products quickly should there be supply issues. Our delivery van is out on the road daily meaning we can deliver to your farm or drop medicines to our daily Wells practice drop off point. Clients can order medicines anytime of day or night via Whatsapp Whatsapp medicine order 07592 307 394.
Our youngstock and Vet tech services complement and support your farm delivering monitoring, vaccinations, and sustainable parasite control.
Farm training
Farm training complements our services supporting your team to develop their skills and knowledge.
“I use Shepton because they have so much combined knowledge that they always know how to fix a problem. Shepton go above and beyond to help with planning and preventing problems, any unfortunate mistakes don’t happen twice! The team are super friendly, from the vets to the vet techs to the admin staff, they are always trying to help!”
Joshua Gay
