Small Holders Club

Marches Farm Vets Smallholder Club

From those with a small flock of sheep, goats, alpaca, a house cow, pedigree line of native breed cattle or a couple of pigs, Marches Farm Vets understand the importance of keeping your animals in good health. By creating a friendly smallholder led group, our clients can share news, knowledge and best husbandry practice, split vaccines, have dedicated educational support and access selected special offers. To confirm – any medical questions or concerns for an unwell animal must be directed straight to a Vet through the practice. However. general questions and chat around animal health is welcome.

If you are interested, sign up by sending an email to smallholder@marchesfarmvets.co.uk or WhatsApp to +44 7360545431 and Cathy will be in touch to follow up.

Full Faecal Worm, Cocci & Fluke Egg Count Service

Open to our smallholder clients, we are pleased to offer a full worm assessment to include initial count (FEC @ £27.49 inc. VAT), vet selected small volume dispensed wormer (single doses if required, costed per ML dispensed) and a free (until 31.08.24) post-treatment check (PWFEC) for any wormer resistance in your stock. Dung samples should be collected fresh, stored in an airtight container or plastic bag and delivered to the Ludlow or Leominster practice, ideally before noon if results are wanted the same day For individual animal FEC, please collect at least 5 g faeces. Our test requires a 3 g sample. For a mob sample, please collect and store samples individually from a representative number of animals. For example, if you have 18 lambs, it would be appropriate to collect faeces samples from 6 lambs as a representative group. Please contact us if you would like any advice on collecting samples or our FEC service.

Vaccine Share

Some vaccines are again in short supply this autumn, and therefore we urge all our clients to think ahead for their needs and plan supplies. Our aim is to get the best efficiency and costs by safely sharing vaccine doses between our clients where possible rather than buying full bottles and potentially wasting valuable resource If you would like to discuss a relevant vaccination program and a herd/flock health plan with the vet, please contact us.

Meet Cathy

Cathy is acting as a helpful volunteer resource for our team in evolving business ideas and acting on customer feedback. As a small holder herself she will be monitoring our small holders club email and helping to organise vaccine shares between our clients. Cathy returned to Herefordshire in 2019 and is a third generation smallholder. Alongside her "day job" as a Water Hygiene Consultant, Cathy runs a small flock of local native breed Ryeland and Coloured Ryeland sheep, a successful meat box scheme, and manages orchards for juice, jam, cider and perry making.

Marches Farm Vets have played an important part in the development and good husbandry of Cathy's Ashmead and Ironside flocks.