Equine Hospitals

Alchemy

Alchemy

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We have a two of Europe's leading Equine hospitals in Suffolk Rossdales & Newmarket Equine Hospital (Greenwood Ellis)

Who do you prefer to use and why? And for those in Suffolk whould you use them in preference to a small vet practise.
 
I have used both. Personally, I had a bad experience with NEH, so woulnd't use them again.I use a local vet for everything, mainly due to call out and my vets are very goopd, but my horse has been to Rossdales for an MRI and couldn't fault them.
 
I did work experience with Rossdales as did many of my classmates, and foal sitting there too, and they are absolutely excellent. They have some really world class vets. Many local practices refer there instead of the Vet School...
 
My horse was referred to Rossdales a few years ago to have her sinus's cleared out and she stayed there for 10 days. I was most impressed by everything including the bill which was not excessive! Rossdales are now also my vets as they have a vet practice in North Hertfordshire.
 
Rossdales :) im based about 15 miles from the hospital and my lad went in for surgery in dec was out within the week :) ive never had a bad experience with NEH we have just always used Rossdales as we are based that side of town, the prices for vetting etc seem to be the same so we just stick with what we know! besides they get lots of referrals so cant be that bad!! :P

i did 2 weeks work experience there many years ago (2005) got to see some really cool stuff, and they let me in surgery! :D :D

sadly due to injured horses ive had lots to do with them recently! thankfully its 20 minutes up the road for scans and what not! :) they are the only vets all of ours are registered with so yes we do use them instead of a smaller practice mainly because their call out fee is only £10-15 more (purely due to the distance we are, there are smaller practices a bit closer) and they have some of the leading vets there with a wealth of knowledge.... if its anything major you tend to get referred anyway so if you have a choice you may as well cut out the middle man and go straight to them!

if Rossdales cant fix it, it cant be fixed.... or at least that's what my vet says! he's a partner so has a bit of an ego!!! :D im hoping hes right and fixes my current one!! :)
 
We have used Rossdales for many years, both for our routine work and everything else, we have over 20 of our own horses and about 15 liveries so have unfortunately seen the hospital on several occasions over the years! I could not fault them in any way or sing their praises highly enough. Having had a previous very bad experience with a mixed practice vet severely misdiagnosing a horse leading to a bill of thousands and very nearly a dead horse I would never use a mixed practice again. I think most of the mixed practices tend to have one or so decent horse vet but if they’re away or it’s out of hours it can really be pot luck who you get. Plus if it’s anything complicated or requiring further investigation it will be referred into Newmarket anyway. We have seen several mixed practice vets with the liveries, including one who took six attempts to sedate a horse as he couldn’t find the vein, one sent out of hours alone to a yearling with colic who had never treated a horse, and a couple who seemed scared to get too close, you just don’t get that with horse vets, they are seeing several horses a day –day in day out, whereas some mixed practice vets would only see a couple a week. I’ve also seen liveries wait up to a week for bloods to come back when being posted to a lab, whereas we can have bloods back a couple of hours later as they are done in house. Our liveries have now pretty much all transferred across, and it’s not really any more expensive either for the routine work, and cheaper if they would need referring. I’m not knocking all vets in mixed practices but the experience I have found is that it can be a lottery especially out of hours. Why use second best when we are lucky enough to have two of Europe’s leading veterinary practices on our doorstep?!
 
What about Animal Health Trust - I thought they were a 'leading equine hospital' also? I have used AHT on a couple of occasions - Sue Dyson lameness clinic for my WB (you don't get any better a lameness expert than Sue) and another of my horse's had eye surgery at AHT.

I have used Rossdales once - I was very happy with the diagnosis, procedure and outcome there too.
 
I have used AHT for eye surgery and Rossdales several times. Could not fault either!
However, been to Rossdales twice with undiagnosable lameness, came away with same diagnosis. Was told to have 1 PTS and the other would only be a light hack if that. Both continued to lead long and useful lives with us as jumpers/hunters and were PTS at 21 yrs.

This is not necessarily a critisism more a case of pointing out they are humans, very good at what they do but they are not God.
 
Ditchjumper2 said:
I have used AHT for eye surgery and Rossdales several times. Could not fault either!
However, been to Rossdales twice with undiagnosable lameness, came away with same diagnosis. Was told to have 1 PTS and the other would only be a light hack if that. Both continued to lead long and useful lives with us as jumpers/hunters and were PTS at 21 yrs.

This is not necessarily a criticism more a case of pointing out they are humans, very good at what they do but they are not God.
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That's the problem, they are not able to see into the future, no one is, and I don't blame them for anything, I just wish modern [young or old] vets would occasionally say, I am not sure................ . I recall JanetGeorge coming up with a good statement about locums ........... "It is OK if I know what is wrong with the horse, but not if I don't!" that says it all......... most of the vets round here [North Ayrshire] have relatively little experience, and I was used to working with world class vets, so had no idea that some of them could not even handle a horse properly.
When I was at Newmarket, the vet saw four mares per hour {scanning}. In HQ [Newmarket] the facilities are world class, but for the ordinary horse owner, we need to be realistic, cost is a factor.
In NEwmarket, vets are not sent out until they know enough, and if in doubt they call a senior vet............ it s not considered a weakness,
 
I am with Rossdales and rate them.

However, I prefer the Cambridge vet school by a million miles and my heart truly belongs to them. I am a little too far to have them for routine things now I have moved but if I need an opinion I trust I make Avice come all the way to me...
 
Have only used Rossdales 5 times and AHT (Sue Dyson) twice. The former - I couldn't fault them, the latter - would never send a horse there again.
 
I could tell an interesting story about SD and AHT....but prob not in my best interest to do so...suffice to say I am with Wagtail. (The eye surgery at AHT was fine though)
 
Ditchjumper2 said:
I could tell an interesting story about SD and AHT....but prob not in my best interest to do so...suffice to say I am with Wagtail. (The eye surgery at AHT was fine though)
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I think many would agree! I know several people with the same opinion. But no, not in our best interests at all!
 
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