Veterinary
Poultry Veterinary Services
As the largest poultry practice in Ireland, we offer a complete veterinary service across the industry; from pullet rearers, commercial egg laying companies and layer farms, to broiler breeders and rearers, hatcheries and broiler farms, as well as the turkey and game bird sectors.
As an independent practice, our vets are free to choose the best clinical care paths, without corporate influence. They focus on preventative versus reactive flock management, working closely with farmers, to deliver proactive and practical advice.
St David’s Poultry Team provide veterinary care to the majority of the broilers in Ireland.
The broiler veterinary team is headed up by Lead Vet, Aonghus Lane. Our approach, in order to provide the best possible management of the birds under our care, is to be on site regularly, and to work alongside the teams on-farm. This enable enables healthy, meaningful discussions, and together agree a clear plan, that focussed on proactive flock management.
Our veterinary services include:
- Site specific and proactive veterinary health and welfare plans
- Laboratory services
- Routine visits, emergency visits for disease, management and biosecurity advice
- Post-mortems
- Investigation of individual site issues and general issues
- Auditing visits
- Introduction of nutraceuticals to aid performance
- Vaccinations
- Antibiotic surveillance and reporting
David’s Poultry Team provide veterinary service across the layer sector – including hatcheries, pullet rearers and egg producers – that focus on proactive flock health.
This means that as the challenges and opportunities continue for the layer industry, our team will work with you to evolve your approach to flock health and management. We do this by working together, to develop tailored health plans, that are specific to your site and any future aspirations you may have. In practical terms, this means our vets will spend much more time working with you to formulate plans for future flocks, versus having to reactively manage existing flocks.
With the current global economic and environmental situation and associated challenges a priority, planning can often involve developing strategies that not only deliver improvements in flock health and welfare, but also significant financial returns too.
Examples of the layer services we provide include:
- Vaccination programmes
- Nutrition
- Biosecurity
- Water hygiene
- Parasite control programmes, including worm monitoring red mite
- Cleaning and disinfection
St David’s Poultry Team Ireland provides veterinary care and flock health planning for turkey farms of all sizes – including those with year-round production as well as producers for the specialist Christmas market.
Our team draws on many years of veterinary work with the turkey industry, during a particularly important period of innovation for the sector. Most recently our focus has shifted from a reactive, to a proactive model of care, that supports the reduction of antibiotics, and drives improvements in turkey health, welfare and productivity. We continue work closely with producers to develop and deliver tailored health plans, to support those priorities too.
Our veterinary services include:
- Routine visits, emergency visits for disease, management and biosecurity advice
- Post-mortems the same day
- Site specific and proactive veterinary health and welfare plans
- Investigation of individual site issues and general issues
- Brooding audit visits
- Auditing visits for vaccination and catching
- Introduction of nutraceuticals to aid performance
- In house lab work with same day turnaround
- Antibiotic surveillance and reporting
Our vets also continue to explore innovative ways to combat disease, and other flock challenges. As an example, when it comes to the approach to blackhead, our wider veterinary team has pioneered the use of essential oils. Since its introduction, the practice has not had to advise on depopulation of any commercial turkey flock, due to the disease, in the subsequent four years, with birds either going on to make a fully recovery or the disease having been managed successfully.
Our experienced vets offer the highest standard of care for pheasants, partridge and grouse in rear and release as well as providing advice on bio-security and welfare legislation.
We believe in providing a holistic, ‘hands-on’ and evidence based approach, accommodating both small and large hatcheries, rearers and shoots. We can offer regular site visits and routine monitoring where required and strive to provide you with clear and practical guidance on methods and protocols that will help prevent disease and welfare issues developing, rather than traditional reactive treatment approach. We support gamekeepers in being proactive and aim to provide clients with health care programmes tailored to the individual needs and requirements.
If post-mortem examinations are required, these can take place on-site, at one of the premises or laboratory facilities. Our professional laboratory service can offer water, bacteriology and rotavirus testing to give you rapid results.
We are actively involved in innovative research and testing of new products and equipment to be able to provide the most up to date guidance. The dispensary stocks a wide range of products for all your medication, vaccine and general product needs.
