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Vets: out-of-hours cover

Babsie

Wise Old Thumper
My rabbit savvy vet covers his own out-of-hours service, which I am very pleased about.

My cat vet, however, doesn't - calls get handed over to an emergency service.

Just wondering how many vets, nowadays, cover their own emergencies?
 
Mine does not as she owns a small practice and she could not function at a competent level without some time off !
 
Our vets cover their out of hours themselves :wave:

I would feel a bit uneasy taking my buns to a vet who didn't know them in an emergency :?
 
My Vets has staff on site 24 hrs a day (nurses and Vet), they have a few practices scattered around the area and the main one near me functions as the out of hours for all the others
 
Mine does, but it's not necessarily the vet from my practice as they have a couple of surgeries in the area.
 
My Vets has staff on site 24 hrs a day (nurses and Vet), they have a few practices scattered around the area and the main one near me functions as the out of hours for all the others

This is like mine it's not Abbey is it :)
 
Mine does not as she owns a small practice and she could not function at a competent level without some time off !

This for mine too. It's only 3 evenings/nights per week and Christmas day that they don't cover, so I feel very lucky. I have been told which alternative vets have their home phone number too so if it was something really critical they could ring them.

It's a tough decision which is the best way to go - be a big practice and lose some of the one-to-one, knowing everybody service that you can get staying small or having to accept that some of the out of hours go somewhere else. I don't know how vets manage doing on-call over night then a days work, I certainly couldn't do it.
 
This was the reason we moved to the vet school, our old practice used an agency for emergency cover and the one experience we had with them was enough to make us realise that it's not worth being registered at a vet that doesn't do their own cover.
 
I don't think any practices round here do their own out of hours cover, vets now seem to do it all. Fortunately my own vet is open 7 days a week so although they don't do nights, at least it minimises the chances of needing to use the emergency vet.
 
Mine does not as she owns a small practice and she could not function at a competent level without some time off !

this, my vets used to be run by just the 1 vet but they've employed another. All vets seem to use the say out of hours around here but when Mae had bloat my vet gave me his personal mobile number just incase :love:
 
Sadly, both my rabbit vet AND my dog vet use Vets Now for their out of hours cover. In my experience, they're not great and charge an absolute fortune. However, 99% of the time, vet visits are planned or, even if it's urgent, can be fitted in during normal surgery hours. IMO it is preferrable to see an amazing bunny vet 99% of the time and risk seeing a not so bunny-savvy vet the other 1%.

The only vet I know of around here who do their own out of hours cover only has one bunny savvy vet so the chances of that vet being on duty when you have an emergency is slim anyway.
 
I don't think any practices round here do their own out of hours cover, vets now seem to do it all. Fortunately my own vet is open 7 days a week so although they don't do nights, at least it minimises the chances of needing to use the emergency vet.

Same round here. I've had to take Anakin twice in the last year and to be fair they've not been bad. They are expensive but both Anakin and Obi Wan are insured so I've always claimed it back.
 
Mine are open 7 days a week, Mon-Sat from about 7am to 8pm. Sunday until about 3pm. They have 24 hour nurses on site but emergency admissions/appointments out of those hours would have to go to the emergency vet. They don't charge extra for Sunday appointments, I've seen some places do?? :shock:
 
They don't charge extra for Sunday appointments, I've seen some places do?? :shock:

Mine doesn't charge extra for Sunday consultations, it's just a normal routine day...but if you have an emergency and there aren't any appointments left (on whatever day not just weekends), the emergency consultation charge is something like £40. I used it once with my cat and I just turned up saying I needed to see a vet, insurance paid up so it wasn't a problem. It depends who I see though, if I see the owner or my normal vet they tend to 'squeeze me in' and charge me normal fees. Far cheaper than the emergency vet fee which is something like £112 before 11pm anyway.
 
We are very lucky, as my vets do their own emergency cover, partially because they do farm animals too. They are very reasonable with call out fees too.
If one of my vets is treating a specific poorly animal they will tell me to call them, even if they are not on call at that time. One vet, Andrew, is very special, and even did a post mortem on Nookie on a Sunday afternoon, in case his body deteriorated overnight. He also argued with the on call vet when Violet needed to be PTS after he was treating her for pneumonia and would have come out at the drop of a hay to see Jack, and made sure it was him who came out to PTS him. He had treated Jack through his last illness.
I really do not know what I'd do if they stopped doing their own on call work.
 
Mine doesn't charge extra for Sunday consultations, it's just a normal routine day...but if you have an emergency and there aren't any appointments left (on whatever day not just weekends), the emergency consultation charge is something like £40. I used it once with my cat and I just turned up saying I needed to see a vet, insurance paid up so it wasn't a problem. It depends who I see though, if I see the owner or my normal vet they tend to 'squeeze me in' and charge me normal fees. Far cheaper than the emergency vet fee which is something like £112 before 11pm anyway.

Wow you see even that seems a bit odd to me, at my vet if it's an emergency, they see you for a normal appointment. In fact, every single time I've rung them, even over something non-emergency (Harry's chronic eye problems) I'd be in the surgery within an hour.
 
I think one of the reasons they charge an emergency fee is because they are open on Saturdays and Sundays they get a lot of 'chancers' who aren't registered there but turn up because they don't want to pay the emergency fee at the OOH provider! I always get 'fitted in' with my vets too, they often hold a few appointments open for on the day emergencies so it's unusual to not get a regular spot if needed, and they will always make room for an emergency if all normal appointments are fully booked, but I do totally get why they at least reserve the right to charge more.
 
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