St David’s Farm Practice offers a complete service for all our dairy clients’ veterinary
requirements. Our aim is to provide the farmer with a health care programme tailored
to the farms individual needs, alongside an efficient and prompt emergency service
and highly competitive medicine pricing.
We aim to offer a proactive service focusing on preventative herd health, disease
control and regular monitoring. We prefer a team approach - working with the producer
and other advisors to meet their business aims.
Our specialised team of farm vets are led by director Tony O’Loughlin from our main
base in Lympstone and South Hams branch in Dartington.
Our team of office and dispensary staff support the vets to meet your needs with
scheduling visits, submitting and reporting laboratory investigations and providing
a fast and efficient dispatch of any required medicine or vaccine from our specialised
dispensary.
Specialist Dairy Services from Dedicated Farm Vets
The practice offers the following veterinary services integrated as part of a whole
farm proactive health approach.
Mastitis and Milk Quality Management
Having vets with a specific interest in mastitis who are up to date with all the
current industry research allows us to provide a complete mastitis service including:
- Thorough audits of the farm, parlour and milking routine.
- Assessment of key problem areas with action plans for improvement.
- Full interpretation and advice from laboratory investigations.
- Effective use of NMR and CIS milk records.
- Regular, continued advice on the management of high cell count cows.
- Targeted advice on treatment.
- Teat end scoring.
- Staff training.
Fertility Management
- Early scanning for pregnancy.
- Investigation and treatment of non-bulling cows.
- Prompt identification and action for fresh cow health issues.
- Monitoring and reviews of oestrus detection.
- Regular monitoring of nutrition, cow condition and management.
- Interpretation of farm records using Interherd.
- Bull fertility testing.
Disease Control
We aim to have up to date information on the disease status of our clients’ farms
and provide the best possible advice on infectious and parasitic diseases. We use
quarterly bulk milk sampling, targeted blood testing and an in house faecal worm
and fluke egg counting service to target our advice. We have a full vaccination
reminder service to help farmers achieve their disease control with minimum effort
and try to coordinate vaccine programmes with other management procedures where
possible. With a strong ethos in preventative medicine we keep our vaccine prices
as low as possible for maximum uptake.
Calf Health Monitoring
Rearing healthy replacements is key to getting a long and productive life from your
cows and the production of high quality beef crosses can be an important source
of income. We can help with the following:
- Advice on transition cow management for healthy calves.
- Measuring colostrum quality and uptake.
- Full investigations of calf diseases and mortality.
- Vaccination and disease control programmes.
- Growth rate monitoring .
Lameness Control
- Investigation of the causes and prevention of lameness on your farm.
- Treatment of severe and chronically lame cows.
- Advice on footbathing protocols.
- Locomotion scoring.
- Knife sharpening service.
- Staff training.
“Our aim is to integrate all the evidence from farm visits and investigations with
the analysis of records to provide a tailored health programme - helping to set
and meet the individual targets and requirements that each successful dairy farm
needs.”