16 | CEDA: Totally Vets T T Richard Loader Wide-ranging needs in community Totally Vets employs 100 staff, including vets, farm technicians, veterinary nurses, front line support staff and management roles. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT We are proud to support Totally Vets in the delivery of premium, leading edge veterinary services to our community. Our experts in Commercial, Property, and Employment Law provide a range of advice to ensure the business needs of Totally Vets are met. We can do the same for you. is... Good for the health of your business. Let’s talk. 0800 1CR LAW | www.crlaw.co.nz 19 Manchester Street, Feilding 111 Customhouse Quay, Wellington 227 Broadway Avenue, Palmerston North With its genesis going back to the days when Vet Clubs were more predominant as a means of providing veterinary services, Totally Vets has been privately owned since 1988, evolving into a comprehensive operation with a major focus on the lower half of the North Island. Clinics include Totally Vets Feilding, Awapuni and Taumarunui; Tararua Veterinary Services Pahiatua and Dannevirke; Levin and Horowhenua Vets, Otaki Vets. There is even a veterinary service operating in Vietnam in the dairy sector. The Awapuni and Fielding clinics service the whole of the Manawatū district, from Apiti, through to the Shannon/Foxton area. The Awapuni clinic is primarily focused on dairy, but there is also a Centre of Equine Excellence there along with a compact companion (pet) hospital. Located opposite the sale yards, the Feilding clinic is a mixed practice, but primarily works with dairy, sheep, beef and deer farm animals. There’s also a large and advanced companion animal hospital there. On the large animal side, both the Awapuni and Feilding clinics have a lifestyle component to them, servicing that rapidly growing sector. Chief Executive Chris Carter says farming veterinary services includes everything from providing ambulatory services, attending a cow in calving difficulty, a sudden death that needs to be investigated, right through to looking at herd or flock performance, its reproduction efficiency, or looking at milk quality programmes. “The efficiency of farming and the need for good animal health, performance and good animal welfare on farm has become absolutely critical to outcomes as farmers face the need to reduce carbon footprint or levels of fertiliser inputs. So the performance of the individual animal is becoming increasingly important and the farmers licence to operate in relation to having good animal welfare has meant that our role on farm is increasing.” Anybody who has ever owned a pet will appreciate the emotion when that special family member is injured or becomes sick, sometimes gravely, and it is the veterinary team’s caring hand that makes the difference, and which you are so grateful for. Chris observes that while farmers are very concerned about their animals and the welfare of their animals, they are also economic units. When you move into the pet space, animals are family members, and it takes on an emotional relationship, which the vets must work with. “More and more, the owners of cats, dogs and other pets are wanting to do their very best for those animals as they try to emulate what would happen in a human situation, which comes with a price tag as it does in the human world.
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