That kind of stuff drives me crazy and I am so happy that I found a small animal vet who works with me. The rescue I work with would go broke if they couldn’t have their fosters do vaccines. And I am not putting our semi feral barn cats in my car to go to the vet unless it’s a life or death thing- I’ll catch and vaccinate when I can and our horse vet gives them their rabies
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The dog breeders I know all do microchips themselves. My breeder friend chipped my puppies for me. They didn’t seem phased by it.
Since I am down to two horses I have the vet do vaccines, but when we had more horses, I did them myself. My vet at the time was ok with it.
For the two I just paid $1000 for coggins, rabies, lyme, floats, one sheath clean and one Se & vit e. Vet comes out to do the rest of the vaccines soon.
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I can see waiting for the smaller breeds since it is a really big needle, but the Pyrenees mix didn’t care in the slightest 
Besides the fact that I told her I wanted to wait until he was 2 to neuter for his joints etc to fully mature.
I think for horse vets it’s definitely fair for them to expect to see your horses at least once a year, if not twice, but being inflexible about vaccinations in particular seems a little much to me. Coggins and a checkup in the spring and teeth and a checkup in the fall seems reasonable to me.
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Ouch is right, and I have three with a variety of dental issues so they need floats at least twice if not 3 times a year. It’s nuts with their teeth.
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Reading thru this, my mare is due for vaccines & dental next month. I better call and find out what this years cost is going to be! Ouch!
I see you used ‘senior’ - I had a vet charge $700 for just the float because my horse was ‘geriatric’. No joke. My horse was only 21 yo!
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I do microchips in chinchillas, they’re a lot smaller than dogs or cats. Most of them are far more offended by being restrained than they are about the actual chipping. I guess if you’re really bad at chipping and push the needle in really slow I could see any animal objecting, I would expect a vet to be more practiced than that.
I vaccinate and trim my own. Pretty much all of the vets I’ve worked with here have been so busy that they are happy to have me do as much as I’m capable of and willing to do. I certainly see them regularly regardless between foaling out two mares last year and two “creative” seniors.
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OUCH!
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We have a new vet (love her!). We just did vaccines and wellness exams Wednesday. 4 way, flu & rhino and the total was $454 for three horses. That’s a shared farm call with three other people.
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I just paid $658 for vaccine (6-way), float, lateral hind foot x-rays to check for negative PA and blood work for Cushing’s (ACTH, insulin and leptin). Oh, and I hauled her in but no office/exam fee 
. I guess they waive that fee for ‘preventative’ care.
The bloodwork did have a $42 Fed-Ex shipping fee on it (to Cornell…I live in Idaho).
Throw in a bottle of flunixin and a tub of bute powder to recharge my pharmacy and a course of Adequan and it all comes to a tidy $1135 . I really can’t complain. The metabolic panel was WNL so I am happy and now we have a baseline. Mare turns 23 next month.
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I did use Senior as it includes yearly cushings bloodwork and the 2x a year dental if needed. Vet doesn’t do power floats on seniors, just manual. Easier on their cheeks and jaws.
Pony is 23 this year. Sound as can be but has cushings/IR and controlled heaves.
700.00 for senior dental is wild!!! My jaw would have hit the floor.
My jaw did hit the floor, and once I picked it up my temper hit the ceiling. Total rip off. The exam was charged as geriatric, the dental, and the damn flu shot. I compared my bill with the other boarder, her horse was about 14 or 15 yo and she didn’t have any added charges 
.
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I was so lucky with my last horse vet’s policies. He let me split a barn call fee with my neighbor across the road. He lived only a few miles away as the crow flies, but it was about ten miles by road. I don’t remember what I was paying for his services, but I remember being pleasantly surprised each time he came out. Once my last pony was boarded, I don’t think he charged a barn call any more. The barn was within a mile of his house. I didn’t choose it for that reason, but it was a nice perk.
My previous horse vet charged a very reasonable barn call fee. His office was only a couple of miles away. I was sad when he retired, as he was also our dog vet and would do my dog’s vaccinations when he was there for the horses’ shots, and he’d euthanized one of our dogs at home. He was the only vet at that practice who did large animals, so there was no one else to use for the horses at that practice once he retired. But I was also very happy with the next vet.
The more recent vet hadn’t done any small animal work since he was at CSU’s vet school long ago, but he agreed to try to euthanize my dog when the time came. DH really wanted it done at home. But the vet couldn’t get a vein, so DH ended up taking her to the shelter where we got her, as they would euthanize any animal that came through them.
Our last farrier lived over 60 miles away, so we recruited a couple of neighbors with multiple horses to also use his services, and coordinated his visits. That ended up being a total of nine horses, which helped keep it more economical for him. When gas got very expensive during the last few years we had the horses, we started paying him more even though he didn’t ask. For the nine months that my last pony was boarded locally before I moved him out of state, the farrier still kept trimming him even though I could no longer coordinate with my former neighbors. I would have been happy if he would have come halfway across the country to trim my pony after the move, but I was happy with the farrier that the new barn used. I was also happy with their vet. When the vet came out for the first time for my guy, I was surprised to see her wearing a CSU jacket. We were a long way from there!
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My vet just completed the building of their own haul in clinic and full facility. They only do farm calls a couple days a week now, and the milage fee feels through the roof. They are really trying to get more folks into the new clinic I think rather than doing farm calls. Note I’m in Canada so yes, it’s per KM not mile. 1 mile = 1.61KM
Also, they have new reception staff who just don’t seem to understand yet the mechanics of booking horses at the same facility on the same day. I miss the old receptionist who knew us all personally 
But… they are a great practice with smart, well respected vets.
New Mileage Structure:
- $2.45/km + tax – Regular mileage
- $1.85/km + tax – Shared area (if we’re seeing someone within 10–20 km of your stop)
- $1.22/km + tax – Split mileage (2–3 clients at the same stop)
- $0.90/km + tax – Barn day rate (4+ clients at the same location)
On the original theme of the thread: aren’t most steel horseshoes imported? The problem with tariffs and ‘made in America’ labels on goods is that most are ‘assembled in America from imported materials’ rather than made here from materials manufactured here. Look on Amazon when shopping for stuff: dig a little and you’ll see that is true on things label made in America.
I expect farriers to pass that Chinese steel tariff along to us very soon. Most service providers will do the same as costs rise for everything: pharmaceuticals, feed, fertilizer, farm equipment, etc. My vets (small and large animal) have told me that drug prices have skyrocketed over the last few years and they’ve no choice but to share that cost with consumers.
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Yes, my brother is a farrier and he said his suppliers have been warning him that the prices are expected to basically double on shoes and rasps
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Yup.
US manufacturers are not going to be able to switch back to making things from materials sourced here in any sort of rapid reversal.
After WWII, Made in Japan ceased being a joke.
I cannot think of a single affordable thing I use or consume that’s entirely US-made.
Only the eggs from my hens & their feed is soy-based with likely imported additives.
Horses “grain” is whole oats grown ???
Hay I know is locally grown from fields that aren’t seeded or fertilized.
The bedding most affordable is a 2h drive for a pallet of bagged pine shavings from an Amish supplier. But the lumber may come from Canada.
Guess I’ll be finding out… 
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We still grow oats, yep. They’ve gone up a lot over the years.
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We also grow sugar beets, so beet pulp is ‘American made’. They make up 54% of the sugar we consume. I can get local oats, grown right here in my suburban county. Hay is also domestic, which is great as well. Here in the PNW we have lots of bedding choices straight from the mills, including pelleted bedding produced in eastern Oregon.
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As demand for these American grown commodities grows (because tariffs increase the prices in the rest of the country who will then be looking for American grown products to replace foreign grown), prices everywhere will increase as demand increases for American grown. That is until demand decreases because there will be fewer horses around to consume those American grown products as in the near term people won’t be able to afford to keep their horses (or to replace those who age out)
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