A new farm veterinary practice – Caledonia Farm Vets – is to open in Strichen Aberdeenshire.
The practice will offer the only dedicated farm veterinary service in the north of Scotland. It will service nearly 500 farm clients across Aberdeenshire and surrounding counties.
Caledonia Farm Vets is being formed as a result of separating out farm services from nearby mixed animal practices, Buchan Veterinary Clinic and Deveron Veterinary Surgeons.
It will have a nine-strong fully dedicated farm veterinary team, including five experienced farm vets supported by a farm administration team of four.
Upon opening on 26 November, the practice is expected to deliver outstanding clinical service to farms in the region.
It will offer a wide range of clinical services to beef, dairy and sheep farmers, including:
- Sheep: Flock health and performance planning, tup fertility testing, OPA scanning, and same day faecal egg counts
- Beef Suckler and Finisher: Herd health and performance planning, pregnancy diagnosis, bull fertility testing, disease screening and herd health blood testing, tailored vaccination programmes, same day faecal egg counts, all routine and non-routine surgical procedures, artificial insemination, embryo storage and transfer, semen collection and storage, and tuberculosis testing
- Dairy: Routine fertility visits, data analysis and consultation, all routine and non-routine surgical procedures, and tuberculosis testing
The Caledonia Farm Vets practice will house the latest farm veterinary facilities and equipment. This includes an in-house laboratory housing an “Ovacyte” faecal worm and fluke egg counting machine, in addition to blood testing services.
The Strichen site and a satellite site in Turriff will also stock a comprehensive range of medicine and animal health products. This will include all potential products needed for day-to-day farming, including marker sprays and the full range of Selekt oral fluid therapy products. There is also an array of VPS wormers, fly repellents and vaccines. All products are competitively priced and price matching is in operation.
In addition, the practice will offer expert advice from an on-site RAMA (SQP), meaning farmers can walk in and pick up the right product for the inciting cause, which can be based on faecal egg count results with 15 minutes.
Sebastian Batchelor, clinical director of Caledonia Farm Vets said: “We first started to offer farm vet services in Strichen back in the 1950’s when a mixed vet practice was set up. But since then the veterinary profession has significantly evolved.
“This move enables our vets and support staff to specialise further and offer the best farm veterinary service in the North of Scotland. All of our team are passionate about Scottish agriculture and livestock production, and we hope our farmers will support us in this move.
“We decided to call our new practice Caledonia – as it is the old Roman name for Scotland north of the Firth of Forth. We are also proudly Scottish so wanted our name and tartan branding to reflect that!”
The Caledonia Strichen practice is located at 19-21 High St, Strichen, Fraserburgh. Whilst the Caledonia Turiff site is at 30 Balmellie St, Turriff. The opening times for both sites will be Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5pm. To find out more about Caledonia Farm Vets, visit their website.