kent Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 The insurance companies are running a business too. If they paid out more than they took in then they would no longer be there! I suspect if everyone had insurance the premiums would fall significantly as the dogs currently insured represent a higher than average risk of claim (in a lot of cases). Maybe not a popular view, but I would be in favour of a minimum level of mandatory insurance....... Well it would keep prices up at the vets just fine now! Hey I am not against profit but when prices are set on client emotions and not risk its all wrong. You tell me why I can get public and product liability cover for 5 million and the insurer needs as much in premiums to insure a pet pooch and then explain why vets charge less for farm animals for similar proceedures Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazooka Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 (edited) The insurance companies are running a business too. If they paid out more than they took in then they would no longer be there! I suspect if everyone had insurance the premiums would fall significantly as the dogs currently insured represent a higher than average risk of claim (in a lot of cases). Maybe not a popular view, but I would be in favour of a minimum level of mandatory insurance....... And claims would rise significantly. Doesn't matter whether a company insures one car, one goat, one dog, one boat or a million of each,...it's all relative. There are 2 million more cars on the road now than there were twenty odd years ago...have insurance quotes and prices dropped? Edited July 16, 2014 by Bazooka Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted July 16, 2014 Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 Well it would keep prices up at the vets just fine now! Hey I am not against profit but when prices are set on client emotions and not risk its all wrong. You tell me why I can get public and product liability cover for 5 million and the insurer needs as much in premiums to insure a pet pooch and then explain why vets charge less for farm animals for similar proceedures The price of insurance is relative to the risk. I've never claimed on my liability insurance - have you? I don't know what you do for a living but next time you get a liability quote ask for a price for a plumber who uses naked flames and see this in action! The prices we charge reflects the amount of work done and the costs involved in doing the work. Lets say I do a caesarian on a dog and a cow - as an example. The dog is done in my surgery, I have that to heat, light and clean. The dog occupies and dirties a kennel. The dog then gets some expensive drugs and connected to the anaesthetic machine - using oxygen and anaesthetic gasses. I will have a nurse and possibly one other assistant for a caesarian - if it's night time they are to call in and pay. I then have gowns, gloves, suture materials and consumables to pay for. Then once everything is back in the kennel and awake we have to set on cleaning the surgery and re-steralising all the kit etc. With the cow I turn up, use a sterile kit and some suture materials. No premises, no staff for me to pay. Just the kit to clean afterwards, not a surgery. Couple of bottles of local anaesthetic at a few pounds each. Do you see why the cow caeser is 1/2-1/3 of the cost of the dog? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DazzJo Posted July 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2014 The price of insurance is relative to the risk. I've never claimed on my liability insurance - have you? I don't know what you do for a living but next time you get a liability quote ask for a price for a plumber who uses naked flames and see this in action! The prices we charge reflects the amount of work done and the costs involved in doing the work. Lets say I do a caesarian on a dog and a cow - as an example. The dog is done in my surgery, I have that to heat, light and clean. The dog occupies and dirties a kennel. The dog then gets some expensive drugs and connected to the anaesthetic machine - using oxygen and anaesthetic gasses. I will have a nurse and possibly one other assistant for a caesarian - if it's night time they are to call in and pay. I then have gowns, gloves, suture materials and consumables to pay for. Then once everything is back in the kennel and awake we have to set on cleaning the surgery and re-steralising all the kit etc. With the cow I turn up, use a sterile kit and some suture materials. No premises, no staff for me to pay. Just the kit to clean afterwards, not a surgery. Couple of bottles of local anaesthetic at a few pounds each. Do you see why the cow caeser is 1/2-1/3 of the cost of the dog? Clever, I pay £90 for my public liability as a painter and decorator but my best friends pays nearly £900 for the year with been a roofer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bazooka Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Clever, I pay £90 for my public liability as a painter and decorator but my best friends pays nearly £900 for the year with been a roofer. And no matter how many painters enter the arena over the coming years, your quotes will rise. The amount of people covered does not reduce risk in each individual case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 The price of insurance is relative to the risk. I've never claimed on my liability insurance - have you? I don't know what you do for a living but next time you get a liability quote ask for a price for a plumber who uses naked flames and see this in action! The prices we charge reflects the amount of work done and the costs involved in doing the work. Lets say I do a caesarian on a dog and a cow - as an example. The dog is done in my surgery, I have that to heat, light and clean. The dog occupies and dirties a kennel. The dog then gets some expensive drugs and connected to the anaesthetic machine - using oxygen and anaesthetic gasses. I will have a nurse and possibly one other assistant for a caesarian - if it's night time they are to call in and pay. I then have gowns, gloves, suture materials and consumables to pay for. Then once everything is back in the kennel and awake we have to set on cleaning the surgery and re-steralising all the kit etc. With the cow I turn up, use a sterile kit and some suture materials. No premises, no staff for me to pay. Just the kit to clean afterwards, not a surgery. Couple of bottles of local anaesthetic at a few pounds each. Do you see why the cow caeser is 1/2-1/3 of the cost of the dog? Yet its dearer to come out to stock all the farmers tell me and they say they wouldn't call a vet out for a beast the price of a ewe in lamb but get it in the trailer and most will do that to their credit and draw a small loss rather than just shoot it and move on Actually far more dangerous than a plumber (and I have two close mates in that trade and understand why they pay more than my plasterer) I use blooming big tanks for cutting steel and welding plant / grinders in this current company and get this its newly formed and its 25 yrs plus from when I did it for a living personally . The real reason its cheaper on farm stock is the customer will not wear such higher prices, tell them £600 to sort a Ewe in difficulty lambing and there will be a dull thud in the shed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 The real reason its cheaper on farm stock is the customer will not wear such higher prices, tell them £600 to sort a Ewe in difficulty lambing and there will be a dull thud in the shed It's absolute ********, I'm afraid. I've tried to explain but you are not listening. People erroneously seem to think that a £600 caeser all goes into the vets pocket. The costs of providing care are immense and the profitability on vet practices is low. I probably make slightly more money on the cow caeser than I do on the dog one, despite the end user paying significantly less due to the much lower costs of providing the service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharlieT Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 The real reason its cheaper on farm stock is the customer will not wear such higher prices, tell them £600 to sort a Ewe in difficulty lambing and there will be a dull thud in the shed Exactly. And as for calling a vet to a ewe, if I can't lamb it, I'm damn sure the pretty young girl the practice will send out jolly well can't, particularly bearing in mind she did her lambing experience with me. Not a lot of economic sense in throwing money at a ewe that's only worth £80/£90. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Going way off topic now... You'd be surprised what techniques we have up our sleeves. Cutting up the lambs or even a caesarian are realistic possibilities if you either call the vet early or bring the vet to the surgery (we do 12+ lambings per day at the surgery in peak season) the outcome can be very favourable. The ones that do badly is when the farmer spent 20 minutes with his filthy hand, then the worker had ten minutes messing about, then the neighbour who's a 'good hand' had 15 minutes then it finally comes to the vets - we get them lambed and the sheep dies. You then have the audacity to blame the vet! A commercial sheep may be worth £80 as a fat cull ewe. Carrying a couple of lambs at maybe £60 each - you have potentially £200 in front of you. If she dies it's £15 to get rid of the body. Gambling £70 on a caesarian early on (before all the messing) can mean you have a ewe to cull and two lambs to sell, you are down £70, but still made £130 from the operating. Messing on yourself and killing the sheep means you are actually down £215 as you lose the ewe, the lambs and then have a body to dispose of. A lambing costing £20/30 - the benefit is even greater! The economics of vet intervention in sheep really does add up. It's some ignorant farmers not wanting to be beaten at lambings that cause much pain, suffering and avoidable deaths at lambing time. There is no getting away from it. One depressing morning this year I shot 3 sheep in the space of an hour all torn internally by 'experienced' shepherds - on farm that would almost never be noticed and the sheep would suffer and die after a few days. Bring them early and we can save almost all of them. Bring them late and you've done the damage, but you try and lay the blame at our feet as we were the last person to touch them! So frustrating and so preventable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 A dog is small compared to a cow and a ewe more equates to a dog, the reason I aint listening is you changing the question to suit your agenda, its more monet to come out and do one and yes I suppose most farms will reach for the gun before the phone. Now compare Equine to cow costs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 If I can do a dog in the back of a landrover with the farmer helping under local anaesthetic then it would be cheap! I'm not moving any goal posts - I'm trying to explain how it works. It's very very rare for us to be called out for a lambing. 99% done at the surgery so no visit fee. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kent Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 Yeah come on Equine and cow compared please Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apache Posted July 17, 2014 Report Share Posted July 17, 2014 We charge the same visit fee for farm or equine. It's the same fee to examine a cow or a horse. Some things do cost more (pregnancy diagnosis for example) but that is a reflection of time and facilities. I can PD cows very quickly - 40+ per hour in self locking yolks, and the scanner is only to clean once. With horses the individual fee is higher, but the owner wants to see the screen, you check thoroughly for twinning etc and have so much more explaining to do. If someone has 30 horses to PD and they will line them up for me I am quite happy scanning them on the hourly rate for farm work. It's less efficient running around to look at individual horses than looking at groups of cattle. As I keep saying - the price reflects the work that goes into providing the service. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rimfire4969 Posted July 18, 2014 Report Share Posted July 18, 2014 My vet charges me an hourly rate, it's the same for my pigs, goats, horses and my dogs when he comes out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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