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Nurturing Growth in Farming, Reflecting on 2023, and Prospects for 2024

Navigating Agriculture's Landscape: A Recap of 2023 and Aspirations for 2024 with Shepton and Wells Vets with Farm Vet Charlie.

Embarking on the journey of 2024, Charlie has taken a moment to glance back at 2023 at Shepton Vets and the rhythm of the farming industry. From the highs and lows in milk prices to the promising indicators of stability in various markets, we've traversed a landscape of challenges and triumphs alongside our resilient farming community.
 

As we enter a new year, I reflect on 2023 at Shepton Vets and the farming industry as a whole. We arrived in 2023 with what we’d look back at now as the tail end of an erratic spike in milk price which soon tumbled back down, however we enter 2024 with some milk price rises and milk markets indicating sensible and stable price for the year ahead – a sentiment that I hope is seen across the beef and sheep markets also. We also hope to see some stability throughout 2024 with our farm drug supplies, having had a relatively challenging 2022/2023 in terms of supply of some key products, which are now either back to being available, or will be shortly – you’ll see all updates in the medicines section of this newsletter. During 2023 we offered several new training courses in response to your requests, such as foot trimming training, introduction to calf rearing and selective dry cow therapy training to mention a few, and we’re always interested in hearing about what other training we could provide which would be useful to yourselves. We continued our Top10 meetings though the end of last Winter and we have recently re-started these for this Winter (the next meeting on Fertility on the 16th January – book your places now!). We have also seen a number of individual achievements from our vets including Rob completing his RCVS in Advanced Veterinary Practice, Rosie achieving Advanced Practitioner status with the RCVS, and Anna and Harry both rapidly gaining experience and qualifications, seeing them both shaping up to be great farm vets. Overall, the successes of 2023 have allowed Shepton to continue growing as a proactive farm animal practice, best placed to help our farmers make the most of the opportunities that 2024 brings, and help with any of the challenges that will undoubtedly also come along with a new calendar year.

- Farm Vet Charlie