As a conscientious owner, we know your horse’s healthcare is your top priority. Preventative health care such as vaccinations, dentistry, worming and weight management are essential to keeping your horse happy and healthy.
- Visits
- Vaccinations
- Microchipping & Passports
- Dentistry
- Weight Management
- Horse Health Plan
- Targeted Worming
- Export Health Certificates
- North Yorkshire including York, Harrogate, Boroughbridge, Selby, Malton, Easingwold, Ripon, Scarborough, Whitby and Thirsk
- West Yorkshire including Leeds, Wetherby and Pontefract
- East Yorkshire including Hull, Goole, Driffield, Bridlington and Beverley
- South Yorkshire including Doncaster
- We can travel further afield for pre-purchase vettings and other veterinary care by prior arrangement.
Local visit fees within 0-10 miles of each practice start from £32.54. Visits can be shared between owners of horses on the same yard to further reduce the cost. Free visits are available to yards that wish to set up a routine visit, or for those that wish to bring their horse to the clinic. Our £25 Zone Visit scheme is also available for routine and preventative healthcare appointments.
Out-of-hours, weekend, bank holidays and long distance visits will incur a surcharge, however horses subscribed to our Premium Health Plan can enjoy 10% off out of hours visit fees.
Vaccinations are used for several diseases in horses. Their main uses include reducing the risk of an outbreak occurring, reducing the spread of an outbreak and to decrease the severity of illness in affected animals.
All vaccinations have an initial course of injections followed by booster doses at specific intervals, the frequency of which depends on the type of vaccine and the immunity provided.
Prevention is better than cure and vaccinations can help prevent several diseases that can affect your horse. The main two diseases commonly vaccinated against are Equine Influenza and Tetanus. Both of these diseases are surprisingly common, especially in unvaccinated horses and it is important that you ensure your horse is vaccinated against these two potentially fatal diseases.
We also offer other vaccinations that are important if you are breeding from your horse or if you are travelling abroad. The cost of routine vaccinations for tetanus and influenza is not covered by insurance policies. However, vaccinations are relatively inexpensive given the expense involved in keeping horses and they can save lives as well as avoiding large veterinary bills. Our Horse Health Plan can help you to spread the cost of annual 'flu and tetanus vaccinations.
From October 2020, regardless of their age, it became compulsory for all horse owners to microchip their horses, ponies and donkeys.
Owners who fail to microchip their horses, ponies and donkeys could face sanctions from their local authority including a compliance notice and a fine of up to £200. If your horse, pony or donkey is not yet microchipped, we strongly advise you get this done soon.
Legally foals must have a passport and microchip within six months of birth or before 31 December of the year in which they were born. Often this is done through the society for the particular breed. Currently you are not obliged to include a name in the passport application, but most breeders do. Thoroughbred foals need to be initially registered for birth within the first month.
Our vets are able to implant microchips and complete the forms necessary to register your horse or foal and issue them with a passport.
We have a team of experienced veterinary surgeons with expertise in equine dental procedures. Regular inspection and rasping can help prevent much more serious disease in the future. The ideal way to achieve is to have a dental examination and teeth rasp performed every 6 - 12 months.
Most horses just require the sharp enamel points rasping on the outside edge of the upper cheek teeth and inside edge of the lower cheek teeth every year. However, if your horse has more severe problems, our vets are also equipped to deal with a range of dental conditions. Only qualified veterinary surgeons are able to carry out extractions (for example, the removal of wolf teeth) or more complicated procedures.
Our routine dental examination and rasp costs just £66.00 per horse including sedation. Modern equine dentistry is most commonly performed under sedation and there are several reasons why this is beneficial:
- Sedation makes it possible for us to perform a thorough oral examination. This is essential if all the relevant pathology is to be diagnosed. Subtle pathology can easily go undetected in an un-sedated patient. Sedation also makes the procedure less stressful for the horse and therefore much safer for horse, handler and veterinarian.
- The dental exam and any subsequent treatment involves many potentially dangerous components: a heavy steel gag, motorised dental equipment and not to mention a 500kg animal!
- The sedatives used are extremely safe and give a window of roughly 40 minutes of good sedation. The patient remains standing and is generally compliant throughout the procedure. They will sometimes become slightly ataxic (wobbly) but this is rarely a problem and the effect is only transient. After this time the effects of the drugs gradually wear off. Horses should not be fed immediately after having received a sedative as they are at an increased risk of choke for a short time.
Only veterinarians can legally administer intravenous sedation.
Equine obesity is a growing and serious problem in the UK horse population. Obesity and recent weight gain is associated with a range of health concerns including increased laminitis risk and poorer prognosis for recovery; worsening of other lameness issues and arthritis due to excess weight; increased pro-inflammatory mediators; respiratory compromise and restricted treatment options for joint medications, respiratory issues and allergies.
There are a few tools we can use to assess your horse’s weight or body condition and the first step to recognising that your horse may have a weight issue is understanding how to assess them.
Weighbridge:
The only way to gain a measure of your horse’s exact weight is to use a weighbridge, which is essentially a large set of scales that you can walk your horse onto and record their weight. We are very fortunate at our Poppleton Clinic to have a weighbridge available that our clients are able to access. Clients are welcome to book a FREE appointment to bring their horse into the clinic to weigh in or if your horse is at the clinic for another reason please just ask if you would like to weigh them at the same time. An accurate weight for your horse is also very useful when calculating how much feed or forage to give, especially when maintaining a strict diet.
Weigh-tape:
Although a weigh-tape won’t be quite as accurate, it will provide an estimate to help with feeding and if used regularly it will help you to monitor weight gain and loss. Weight management can be a frustrating process sometimes and so keeping a record of regularly recorded weights can help you understand if you are making progress or highlight where things may not be quite going right. Most weigh-tapes are used around the horse’s girth and it is important that for each measurement they are used in the same position each time and around the same time of day.
Body Fat Scoring:
Although measuring the weight of your horse is extremely useful, body condition scoring helps us understand if that weight is appropriate for your individual horse. The most commonly used system in the UK scores the horse from 0 (emaciated) to 5 (obese) with half scores used. On this scale, depending on the individual, a score of 2.5-3.5 would be considered a healthy range for the vast majority of horses. We would recommend you score your horse at least monthly and keep a record so you can recognise any changes and react accordingly.
Weight Loss Programme
Our Equine Weight Management programme is available free of charge for our clients to join to help manage their horse's weight. Our campaign is supported by Dengie, and we’ve teamed up to compile a free equine weight management booklet that shows you how to assess condition and safely lose any extra pounds. There is space for you to set targets, track your horse's progress, and create an exercise plan. We also have a limited number of weight-tapes available to the first few clients who sign up. If you would like more information on weight management or to organise a free weight loss clinic at your yard, please just contact us for more information.
Our Horse Health Plan is the simple way to look after your horse's health whilst saving money. A healthy, happy horse needs lots of care and attention, including vaccinations, worm treatments, and regular check-ups. By spreading the cost of essential treatments over 12 months, our Horse Health Plan makes caring for your horse more affordable.
Your horse gets their annual vaccination against potentially dangerous diseases, and protection against internal parasites.
To keep your horse in peak condition, we provide regular health checks with your vet, as early diagnosis of problems will help your horse to live a long, healthy life. Our Horse Health Plan can help to ease the worry and financial strain of owning a horse.
How do I register?
Join Online NowOr pick up a registration form at reception, or download and print the Application Form at home then bring to reception with you.
For further information please download our Healthy Horse leaflet or speak to a member of our team.
Terms & Conditions can be found here.
Targeted worming is the best practice for your horse’s health. By performing regular worm egg counts, it ensures that only those horses that have worms are treated. This means the worms are less likely to become resistant to the products we use.
Faecal worm egg counts are processed at our Poppleton clinic and cost £9.76 per sample. We are very competitively priced for a wide variety of wormers and for Tapeworm ELISA test kits.
We also offer a 12-month Worming Programme to our clients. This costs £50 per year and includes:
- An initial consultation with one of our vets about worming and grazing management
- An individual tailored plan for your horse/yard
- Targeted annual tapeworm monitoring including saliva test
- Autumn/winter wormer if required
- A minimum of 3 faecal worm egg counts per year
- Yearly wall planner to help you keep track of your personalised programme
Our vets are available to offer you advice on worming and can provide you with our targeted worming plan, designed specifically for your horse. Please contact us to find out more information.
It is a requirement for all horses and ponies exiting the UK to have an Export Health Certificate (EHC) and accompanying health tests before travel.
The EHC is an official document that confirms your export meets the health requirements of the destination country. There are also a number of isolation and residency requirements and blood tests that your horse needs before travel.
Minster Equine Vets have Official Veterinarians (OV's) qualified to provide EHC's, confirm that your horse meets residency and isolation requirements and to take the necessary blood tests that your horse needs in order to travel.
