We can offer routine castrations and dehorning/disbudding on farm. The procedures will need a suitable crush or handling facility so our vets can work safely whilst performing the surgery. All surgical procedures come with risks, these risks are increased as the animal becomes older. Therefore, we suggest that castrations and disbudding are performed at a young age. All procedures will be carried out using local anesthetics and anti-inflammatories.

Our vets can provide a wide range of diagnostic testing, this can be performed on farm with results having a quick turnaround. A speedy diagnosis is imperative to ensure the disease process is treated and prevented from spreading to other herd members. We can confidently provide on farm post mortems to ensure valuable information about the disease process is not lost.

Faecal egg counts can be performed in house and can provide same-day results.

Our vets are familiar working with herds to achieve high health statuses and can offer advice on how to role out testing to become part of Premium Cattle Health Schemes.

Ensuring the beef cow is in the correct condition during her gestation will lead to fewer problems at calving, ensure that the foetus grows appropriately, and will optimise the cow’s ability to produce high quality colostrum.

Powys is a region of the UK that suffers from trace element deficiencies, knowing what these are on each farm will allow you to make appropriate management adjustments. This can be achieved by performing blood tests on a number of cows at various stages of their cycle.

Quite often there are various schemes and funding available from industry leaders to perform this testing. At Builth Vets, we pride ourselves on staying current and will feedback to you when we know of such schemes and their details.

Pre-breeding checks can be extremely useful to avoid losing time and ensure calving patterns remain tight. Ultrasound examination of the animal’s reproduction tract will ensure any problems, that may have occurred during the last pregnancy, are picked up. Ultrasound will also enable the vets to identify animals that are not cycling correctly and deal with them appropriately.

We work closely with herds that want to synchronise their animals for artificial insemination and embryo transfer. We are happy to discuss protocols directly with the specialist reproduction vets carrying out the work for you.

Our vets can perform pregnancy diagnosis using an ultrasound machine down to approximately 30 days of pregnancy. We strongly encourage our clients to use this service, as the beef cow functions under such tight financial margins it is vital that she gets back in calf and that the bull is working. Having barren cows or bulls not working can be a financial disaster for any size farm.

We advise that you present cows for us to scan from 40 days after the bull has been removed, this will ensure empty cows are identified. Ideally we advise that cows be scanned 2 months after the bull has been turned out.

Ideally, the bull should be examined before being turned out with the cows. This may include a fertility test to assess the quality of semen produced. While we do not offer this service ourselves, we can arrange for it to be carried out.

This procedure can be performed on heifers from 12 months of age and is a tool that helps to make an informed decision for heifer retention. An instrument is used to measure the heifer’s pelvis on a horizontal and vertical axis. We can then use this data to identify heifers with a small pelvis, which will often require a caesarean section, and they can be removed from the herd.