Guess my vet bill, follow on from daylight robbery.

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thatsmygirl

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Say you have a 7 month old foal who is showing very low grade colic ( no rolling) just not right. You ring the vets who come out on a fri evening at 6.30 pm, there for 5 mins max and give him one bute injection and says to keep eye on him.

What would you expect your bill to be?
 
I paid £185 for a 'choke' visit 6 weeks ago on a Sunday evening at 6pm.
Visit lasted 12 mins from turning off the engine to starting it again, 60% of that time was spent doing the paperwork.
2 injections: sedative & muscle relaxant. Missed vein twice while trying to get needle in (horse standing like a statue) had to remind vet to carry out basic initial checks such as heartbeat etc before injecting. Vet drove a total of 8 miles round trip.

Its not my regular vet tho, or from the practice I use. (another long story about well meaning neighbours)

These things happen.....:rolleyes:
 
Oh I feel a bit better now after some off your guesses, :D

the bill was £100 which when I opened I thought that's fine until I read the break down and the injection was £8 all the rest was call out etc which was the bit that got me. £100 vet bill for a £8 injection just seems mad to me.

If it was one off my older horses I would off kept eye for the night and see what happens but I wasn't risking it on a foal.

My foal means the world to me and would off paid a lot more if need be but just can't get over the £8 bit
 
thatsmygirl said:
Oh I feel a bit better now after some off your guesses, :D

the bill was £100 which when I opened I thought that's fine until I read the break down and the injection was £8 all the rest was call out etc which was the bit that got me. £100 vet bill for a £8 injection just seems mad to me.

If it was one off my older horses I would off kept eye for the night and see what happens but I wasn't risking it on a foal.

My foal means the world to me and would off paid a lot more if need be but just can't get over the £8 bit
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Oh I was well out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Not quite as irritating as my vet who once charged me £10 for literally looking down the yard at my mare and saying a couple of sentences, she was there to rig test one of my geldings and i asked her a question about my mare who had been out with him, she didn't want to examine her or anythng until she'd got the test results so literally looked down the yard at her form the geldings box and mumbled something about this and that then charged me £10 for the advice.............WTF??
 
That sounds like a bargain to me! ;)

I had similar thing in Sept. Low grade colic, horse still eating and pooing, not rolling but looking very unhappy and pawing the ground occasionally.
After a serious bout of colic in Jan (8 days at vets but luckily no surgery needed..) I thought it best to get vet out straight away, called the vet at about 6.30pm. Vet examined, diagnosed gassycolic and treated with bute and buscopan. Bill was £176.
 
I'm a vet and my mum just read this post to me and asked what I thought the bill would be... And I was bang on. I broke it down as roughly £30 call out, £30 out of hours surcharge, £30 examination fee/time/professional opinion and £10 bute injection.

I know it seems a lot, and I'm not a partner in a practice so I don't entirely know the rationale behind the costings, but unfortunately vets do not operate as a pharmacy and therefore the £92 of the bill is for things that are necessary to allow us to administer the £8 injection (although unlucky it was OOH). Your vet appears to have walked onto the had for 15 mins, given what you suspected your foal needed and charged the earth, but his time and professional opinion must be charged for and he will have checked for any tell tale signs that things are not as simple as they seem and made sure there are no reasons not to give your horse the bute.

I understand as much as anyone that being hut by a big unexpected vet bill is unpleasant, but your bill seems pretty standard. Hope your foaly is back to his normal self now :)
 
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The most irritating vets bill I've ever had was only for £75, but the vet had to travel a grand total of 3 miles (1.5 there, 1.5 back) and was on the yard for literally 5 minutes. She looked at my mare's foot, and said, "yep, puss in the foot. poultice it". Then left. No dressings, not bute, nothing.

I was charged £75 for the pleasure of her company for five minutes. NOT HAPPY!
 
Starzaan said:
The most irritating vets bill I've ever had was only for £75, but the vet had to travel a grand total of 3 miles (1.5 there, 1.5 back) and was on the yard for literally 5 minutes. She looked at my mare's foot, and said, "yep, puss in the foot. poultice it". Then left. No dressings, not bute, nothing.

I was charged £75 for the pleasure of her company for five minutes. NOT HAPPY!
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Wanna hear mine?

Phoned vets

'horse is having a low grade allergic reaction to something and needs some antihistamine'

vet comes out looks at horse for 2 mins says

'yep she is you're right. I don't have any in the car can you pop to the practise and get them (bearing in mind I made the appointment a week in advance!)'

then as the sod was leaving he says

'well that was nice and quick wasn't it?'

Cost me £80 and I had to drive across town in the rush hour AND when I got there they only had half my prescription in stock and I had to go back two days later!
 
Do you know what? I'm going to stick up for the vets here. I pay for my vet, whatever it costs, to cast their educated eye over my horses. I don't call them out lightly (now) but if I'm not sure then I won't hesitate, no matter what the cost, to come and give me their opinion. I'm a novice owner and have 'learned' how my horses (2) react to any sort of pain. Sometimes, I over-react, because it's something I haven't seen/heard/dealt with before, but peace of mind comes at a price.
I had my vet out this week, she said 'Don't know what/why/wherefore it happened, but keep an eye on it and if it gets any worse then we'll have to have a think. Don't know what we'll so but..." It's no consolation but even at £80, I like to think that I'm not worrying about it alone.
Honestly, even when the bills come in, I think my vets are worth their weight in gold. Except when I get the idiot vet of course (which, now I've complained, doesn't happen very often ;) )
Dooble
 
dooble said:
Do you know what? I'm going to stick up for the vets here. I pay for my vet, whatever it costs, to cast their educated eye over my horses. I don't call them out lightly (now) but if I'm not sure then I won't hesitate, no matter what the cost, to come and give me their opinion. I'm a novice owner and have 'learned' how my horses (2) react to any sort of pain. Sometimes, I over-react, because it's something I haven't seen/heard/dealt with before, but peace of mind comes at a price.
I had my vet out this week, she said 'Don't know what/why/wherefore it happened, but keep an eye on it and if it gets any worse then we'll have to have a think. Don't know what we'll so but..." It's no consolation but even at £80, I like to think that I'm not worrying about it alone.
Honestly, even when the bills come in, I think my vets are worth their weight in gold. Except when I get the idiot vet of course (which, now I've complained, doesn't happen very often ;) )
Dooble
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I am not vet bashing I promise. It's just so frustrating when you know exactly what the problem is and you can't avoid the bill.

Every time I have phoned the vet in two years I have told them on the phone what the problem is, what I need and they come out and completely agree with me and leave again.

It isn't their fault of course and is unavoidable. It's just a teensy bit galling!
 
Actually, I was a little hasty in my reply as the subject was 'Guess my vet bill" Sorry, I'd imagine about 120 squid. I have the same thing, experience buys me a few less vets bills, but when I do call them, I usually (so far) have the prognosis right. When I first had a horse, I was their dream owner - 'Looking off?' call the vet. 'Small scratch?' Call the vet. 'Belly ache?' call the vet. I swear I had them on speed-dial. 'Peace of mind?' worth a thousand quid ;)
 
The relatively modest contribution of the medication to the final bill is not a reason to be dissatisfied.
The majority of your bill comes from your ability to compel a professional to visit you in the evening (no doubt they had already done a days work, and might be working on Saturday as well!) and their skill at recognising that a simple cheap injection will cure the problem. The modest cost of the medication should be celebrated not seen as reason to moan about the rest of the bill.
 
I had a similar problem on a sunday afternoon, my bill was £105.....I would rather that than a dead pony though!! My little bugger was 100% better by the time the ver arrived too....I felt a right chump LOL.
 
I would have expected the bill to be about £100, knowing my vet. I am lucky that I rarely have to call him out, but I never resent doing so, or the bill I get. I also am lucky that my vet has a commonsense approach, and is happy for me to collect from him, without having to see the animal everytime, therefore negating a call out charge.
 
I have no idea on the care of a foal or if they would be old enough to suffer from tapeworm. But in older horses that can be wormed normally, tapeworm can cause repetitive early colic type symptoms and have heard several owners say that giving a tapewormer tends to clear up the problem. We have 3 horses/ponies on our yard who periodically suffer not quite colic symptoms so now we always make sure that they are tapewored regularly

http://www.intelligentworming.co.uk/doyouknow-aboutworms-tapeworms.asp

I also read in one of IW newsletters that the tapeworm lives in the passage between the horses two guts and feeds off of the horses feed not the horse.
 
Doesn't sound that bad?

Not as annoying as when our horse broke his leg from being hit by a car, break was extremely bad, it was literally hanging off, we called the vet and the huntsman at the same time. The huntsman came in about 20 minutes and shot him( :( ), the vet turned up an hour and a half later and had the cheek to send us a bill saying "RTA - Dead on arrival" !!!!
 
One of our vets was nicknamed Jabber the Grabber - he could have your horse injected with unknown potions and have the invoice written out in the time it takes most folk to get out of their cars!

His charges were worse than that lot going down the valley of death!

I see not much has changed.
 
stranger1612 said:
The relatively modest contribution of the medication to the final bill is not a reason to be dissatisfied.
The majority of your bill comes from your ability to compel a professional to visit you in the evening (no doubt they had already done a days work, and might be working on Saturday as well!) and their skill at recognising that a simple cheap injection will cure the problem. The modest cost of the medication should be celebrated not seen as reason to moan about the rest of the bill.
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Where's the like button?
 
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