TB TESTS, ARE VETS TAKING THE MICK!

[marcus]

Hi,
My view is that tb tests for small numbers are extremely expensive, and therefore take most of the profit out of selling them, or put people off hiring bulls if they only have a small number of cattle.
Also why is there such a variation, I know of people being charged anything from £50 to £130 inc vat. The £130 was to test one bull!!!.
Marcus.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

No, vets are not taking the mick.

Our farms vary from 5 minutes to 1hour travel each way from the surgery. So for a TB test, we may spend up to 4 hours travelling. We need to have our equipment and paperwork prepared beforehand, arrive clean from the previous farm and leave clean to go to the next. We return to the surgery and have more paperwork to sort out. We are doing a professional job in a professional way, we run practices which are geared up to providing services or arranging for provision of services 24/7, 52 weeks of the year. A veterinary practice is a very complex business and involves the vets and indeed lay staff in many tasks other than the "chargeable" time at work. Thus the hourly rate necessary to maintain a practice does tend to be high say in comparison to hourly rates of pay for many employed people - but the hourly rate does not go straight to the vet, it runs the practice and the profit left for the vet to take home wil only be a fraction of that. Compare vets charges to lawyers, accountants, or many other professionals and you will see they are neither taking the mick nor making a fortune.

Duncan

[Jac]

Hi,
My view is that tb tests for small numbers are extremely expensive, and therefore take most of the profit out of selling them, or put people off hiring bulls if they only have a small number of cattle.
Also why is there such a variation, I know of people being charged anything from £50 to £130 inc vat. The £130 was to test one bull!!!.
Marcus.

Government bodies are ' taking the mick' and the daft ones are the farmers who stand for it in the first place. If the powers that be want the animal tested then they should pay for it.

[bjreroberts]

Sounds cheap to me, try getting a plumber out on 2 separate days for half an hour and I bet there are a lot that would charge you more than £130.

[Jac]

Sounds cheap to me, try getting a plumber out on 2 separate days for half an hour and I bet there are a lot that would charge you more than £130.

The question is if you were buying say a calf, would you be happy if the vendor put £130 on the price?