Dairy Services
We work with over 100 dairy clients across Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset.
Shepton Vets is well positioned with its 3 locations in Shepton Mallet, Wells and Castle Cary to service some of the most efficient dairy farms in the UK. Our team want your dairy business to thrive, by supporting efficient milk production from happy, healthy cows.
We believe in a preventive approach where possible. When disease or production challenges arise, we work proactively, problem solving with you to find solutions that suit your system and farm’s resources.
Our team of 14 experienced farm only vets are friendly and approachable, 11 of our vets have more than 10 years’ experience in farm practice. We aim to provide farmers with the most up to date information and advice. To enable this, our vets go on lots of courses and are encouraged to feedback new information learned to the team at our weekly, Thursday lunch meetings. We foster a collaborative approach, if your vet doesn’t know the answer, someone in the team will and if they don’t, someone within the wider XL Vets Community will. Heifer rearing, udder health and milk quality, lameness, infectious disease control, robotic milking, block calving, genetics, we have team members that have expertise in these key areas of dairy science.
We have a comprehensive range of services suited to the busy dairy farmer, our helpful team of vet techs allow you to outsource some of the tasks that can be difficult to keep on top of – vaccinations and disbudding for example.
Using farm data
Shepton Vets farm have a consultancy Uniform package, TotalVet, Interherd+, EBVC fertility and production reports, these programmes and reports support data driven decision making on farm. Benchmarking meetings using real farm data such as our regular, Shepton Top 10 meetings highlight high performance and explore how farms that want to improve can do so by learning from our Shepton Champions
Routine fertility visits
The majority of the dairy farms we work with have routine fertility visits at an interval to suit them, these visits will be with the farms chosen vet. Providing farms with continuity means clients get the most from these regular visits, as vets develop a working knowledge of the farm’s history and disease challenges. All farms have a designated 2nd vet that will cover when the main vet is unavailable, some farms operate a buddy system, alternating between 2 vets. 2 heads are better than 1 and this allows progression of our younger vets.
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
Herd health planning
Shepton’s herd health plans are regularly updated to ensure they are fully Red Tractor compliant as well as conforming to the requirements of the individual client’s milk contract. A herd health plan visit provides a good opportunity for meaningful discussions to be had between the farm’s team and their regular vet about areas of performance that could be improved. Herd health visits often identify practical management or husbandry measures that can be fine tuned to improve productivity and animal health on farm.
Our office team will remind you when your health plan is due, Shepton’s Healthy Cow Club allows clients to spread the cost of their Herd Health Plan and Johnes Plan across the year while benefitting from discounted training courses
Winter Discussion Groups
Shepton’s winter discussion group meetings use real data from our client’s dairy herds to highlight high performance, anonymously benchmarking and exploring how we can improve metrics on your farm. At each of these meetings we have awarded certificates for those reaching target and crowned the “Shepton Champion” inviting them to share with others how they have achieved this.
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.
Farmer training courses and events
We have a busy calendar of farm training courses throughout the year, supporting your team to develop their skills and knowledge. Bespoke training for your team targeting defined learning objectives can be arranged on request.
