| 77 RURAL SERVICES » Waikato Equine Veterinary Centre Beautiful purpose-built facility Horses have been received from as far away as the South Island, though Greg says the main client base would be from within a 100km radius of the centre. Sue Russell Veterinarian, Dr Greg Quinn, says demand for services from their bespoke Equine Veterinary Centre, continues to grow. Shifting from much smaller premises in Te Rapa, Hamilton, to a beautiful purpose-built facility in Cambridge has enabled G.reg and the team to offer clients a much wider range of professional equine health services. “We were definitely limited in the scope of services we could supply particularly into the racing/sport-horse sector. With conditions such as lameness, we wanted to have the resources and capability to offer a world-class standard of assessment and care and our new centre gives us this,” Greg explains. More room has also meant that horses who require hospitalisation and post-surgery specialist care are in the very best of hands. Due to the rapid growth of the new clinic - within a few short years, the practice has doubled in size - now employing twice the number of vets, three interns, three times the amount of support staff and from three nurses to twelve. The practice has increased its digital x-ray capacity from 3 mobile systems to 8 and from 1 digital musculoskeletal ultrasound machine to 6. Horses have been received from as far away as the South Island, though Greg says the main client base would be from within a 100km radius of the centre and we accept referral work from all over the North Island. “We’re right in the heart of the thoroughbred industry here and it’s great to think an injured horse can get to us quickly.” Special clinic days are also conducted with Vets visiting clients in South Auckland and also regular visits to the Taranaki region. We have also recently started a branch clinic in Taupo - with the intention to build a smaller-scale clinic there with the surgical cases still coming up to Cambridge. As one of two board-certified specialist surgeons in the practice, Greg is complemented by a team of highly skilled equine veterinarians - with all having their individual areas of expertise, including a board-certified sports medicine and rehabilitation clinician, and clinicians with world-class experience in - among other things - cardiology, reproduction, racetrack work, prepurchase work and dentistry. “We also have a surgical resident in training. We’re the only equine centre in New Zealand to provide a specialist residential training programme. All of our vets have spent time overseas in busy equine referral centres and universities to gain additional experience. But to become a specialist there is an additional three years of a supervised training program (Residency) followed by specialist examinations a year afterwards.” Asked about plans to grow now that they’re enjoying working in much more fit-for-purpose facilities, Greg says a small increase in size would be welcomed. “We have just completed a stable extension, growing from 11 boxes to 15 boxes and adding new isolation facilities, additional storage and work-up areas, but I am sure in a few years we would have outgrown that as well. The clinic had a dedicated surgical building, diagnostic and treatment building with two workup rooms, a standing surgery room, a reproductive room and mare and foal intensive care. The administration building is our bespoke front building giving the site a striking entrance. The stables and buildings flank a central arena for ridden examinations and vettings. There are hard and soft lunge surfaces with two straight trot-ups with plans to add additional lunge areas and another straight (hard) trot-up to reduce the chances of clinicians having to wait to assess horses during busy periods.” Technologies and developments in therapies are constantly evolving within the equine veterinary sector. Now, more emphasis is on developing ways to perform surgical procedures on horses sedated - and standing, rather than under general anaesthesia. Greg says general anaesthesia of horses is generally very safe - but by their size and flight-fright nature, and when they are unwell and require longer anaesthetics, horses can occasionally suffer complications during recovery from a general anaesthetic. “We’ve also got excellent ancillary computerassisted diagnostic equipment to measure lameness and movement. It means we can understand what’s happening for the horse at each step and this gives us more information to treat from - it does not replace an experienced clinician, but it helps with some of the tricky cases.” Waikato Equine Veterinary Centre also has www.wevc.co.nz (07) 827 5570 www.wevctaupo.co.nz 027 333 2042 Waikato Equine Veterinary Centre – Taupo At Waikato Equine Veterinary Centre we have unrivalled experience and expertise within our team for looking after your equine athlete. With access to a comprehensive suite of diagnostic tools, coupled with our state of the art equine hospital, this makes us your best choice for diagnosis and treatment of conditions a ecting your horse. We work in partnership with you and provide professional advice to achieve the ultimate health, wellbeing and performance from your horse. • Comprehensive reproductive services, including: arti cial insemination, embryo ushing and transfers or dispatch to storage. • Ambulatory services in the Waikato & greater Taupo regions (WEVC Taupo). • Regular trips to Taranaki and South Auckland regions. • Specialist surgical services, including: upper respiratory surgery, arthroscopy, tenoscopy, laparoscopy, fracture repair and advanced dental and sinus surgery. • Expertise in performance evaluations. • Comprehensive lameness evaluations. • Pre-purchase inspections. OUR SERVICES INCLUDE: three portable video endoscopy systems as well as a Dynamic Endoscopy. Being able to see what is happening to the upper airways in exercising horses is an essential technology that enables the team to diagnose complex breathing disorders that reduce performance. “Recently we have branched into technologies and expertise that allows us to provide services for advanced reproductive procedures such as embryo transfer.”
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