large animal 'pets' and poor vet treatment

[JLD]

We are struggling to get decent vet care for our large pet animals. Only one vets in about a 50 mile radius does large animal work now and they just aren't interested in our pet pigs and alpacas, there is no way a vet treating a dog or horse would be so dismissive and quite frankly wrong in their treatment but as there is no one else we can use we have to.put up with it. They seem to be interested in herd management and commercial decision making. I am fairly robust and practical and don't baby our pets and call the knackerman when needed ( after vet refused to come out to put down a much loved pig by injection I realized there was no point asking ) but a little basic care and attempt at diagnosis and treatment would be nice. Has anyone else found this or is it just ours ?

 

[wkiwi]

Unfortunately there does seem to be a shortage of vets that will do this type of service. Even horse vets are getting scarce in some places.
I was teaching vet nurse/ vet students and know that not a lot is taught on species like alpacas, and it is very hard for students to get experience (e.g. they are different/difficult to get a catheter in because they have valves in their jugular veins). We only had one alpaca needing hospitalisation during a year and of course some of the students got to care for it but only one or two can get to give it treatment. Ditto a lot of pet species e.g. when i was a student we were told to send bird clients to a bird vet and (from a long distant memory) our bird lectures consisted of a couple of lectures mostly on budgies, and lots on chickens (mass-farmed either free range of housed). As such, I never had much confidence looking after birds and i certainly don't remember much now (except they die easily).
Nowadays, because of sueing for wrong diagnosis/treatment etc., vets are a lot more wary about treating species they don't see on a regular basis and have a lot of experience of.

Regarding emergency calls, a vet has to legally provide pain relief or euthanasia regardless of the species (unless their is a more competent vet available e.g. a cat vet wouldn't be expected to euth a horse if an equine vet was in the area). As you don't have another choice, I would have expected the vet to come out unless it wasn't an emergency (by the way, if i had a pet pig i would choose the knackerman rather than an injection which pigs seem to loathe, and i know a vet nurse who would always do the same for their pet pigs, but then i would also do this with my own horses most of the time too so this is just personally opinion).
If the vet doesn't attend in an emergency, and another vet isn't available or there aren't any extenuating circumstances (from vets point of view) then you should report them to the RCVS.

 

[Wishful]

Pigs are really not easy to kill especially by injection - general advice among vets is to get someone who knows what they are doing to shoot them so probably not a bad move by the vet.. VDS news has always had a few pig euthanasia gone wrong stories...

Exotic lectures are much more limited than the "standard" species so lots of vets hate dealing with them - camelids and reptiles / insects are the usual ones but Ostrich farms also strike fear into the heart of new grads and senior vets alike!

I guess my only advice would be to do as much research as possible so you can challenge the vet if they are wrong.

Farm/large animal work has gone very commercial and I suspect will get worse as the cross subsidisation by TB testing has more or less ended with the new contracts and the ols fashioned mixed practices are dying out other than in the most rural areas.