Farm and Equine Vet

Farm and equine vets work in an entirely different environment from small animal practice. The majority of your time is spent on-farm, on-yard, and outdoors — travelling between clients across a rural patch, often in all weathers, dealing with animals that cannot be moved to a clinic. Farm vets advise and treat cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry across a range of disciplines: routine fertility work (pregnancy diagnosis by rectal palpation, AI and embryo transfer programmes), herd health consultancy (biosecurity, nutrition, vaccination protocols, production medicine), statutory testing (TB testing for cattle is a major workload in England and Wales), lameness investigation and treatment, calving and dystocia management, castrations, dehorning, and emergency large-animal surgery. You advise farmers on welfare compliance and zoonotic disease control, and contribute to farm assurance and red tractor standards. Equine vets treat horses in leisure, competition, and breeding settings: lameness investigations, pre-purchase examinations (PPEs), reproductive work (AI, scanning in-foal mares, foaling emergencies), dentistry, respiratory and orthopaedic conditions, emergency colic triage and surgery (in referral settings), and management of wounds and infections. Clients are professional horse owners, trainers, stud farms, racing yards, and leisure riders — a very different client dynamic from pet owners. On-call culture is embedded in both farm and equine practice; calvings, foalings, and colic emergencies do not work to office hours. The physical demands are high — long days, heavy manual work, confined spaces, and unpredictable animals. Many farm and equine vets develop deep expertise in a narrow range of species, building long-term professional relationships with farming and equestrian clients.

The farm vet workforce is in a well-documented crisis. The British Veterinary Association and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) have both flagged an ageing farm vet demographic and a growing shortage of newly qualified vets choosing farm practice — a gap that threatens food security and animal welfare compliance at a national level. TB testing requirements under DEFRA present a consistent and regulated workload that cannot be delegated to non-vets. Food safety and welfare regulations increasingly require veterinary sign-off across the production chain. The equine sector is similarly under-supplied relative to demand, particularly for experienced equine surgeons and reproduction specialists. RCVS registration is legally required; the five-year degree creates a controlled supply. Farm and equine vets who develop specialisms and longstanding client relationships hold a particularly strong position.

Early start for a farm call — pregnancy diagnose 40 cows on a dairy farm, discuss nutrition and conception rates with the farmer, and treat a lame cow with a wooden block. Drive to another farm for a calving that has been ongoing through the night — assisted delivery of a live calf and post-calving checks on the cow. Mid-morning TB test skin measurements at a beef farm (a routine statutory visit). Afternoon: equine yard visit — scan three mares for pregnancy, examine a horse with a suspicious hind-limb lameness, perform a nerve block and flexion tests, and advise on box rest and referral. Evening: on-call for colic emergencies — a late call to a yard for a horse with suspected large colon displacement requiring triage, pain relief, and a referral call to the equine hospital.