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Racehorses in Training

Rossdales has a highly experienced team of veterinary surgeons dedicated to care of the racehorse, providing a prompt, personal and efficient service to our Thoroughbred racing clients. We work closely with trainers to help look after the health and welfare of their racehorses and by doing so optimise the performance of each horse and minimise their risk of injury and sickness. Our racing team are familiar faces at many of Newmarket’s training yards, providing a high quality comprehensive service with minimal disruption to trainers’ busy daily schedules.

We carry out most routine veterinary work at training yards. Experienced clinicians make regular visits to provide services from clinical assessments, which may utilise all modern portable diagnostic equipment to vaccinations and dental care. These services are backed up by direct access to our Equine Hospital and Diagnostic Centre for more complex cases and for those that require hospitalised surgery.

All of our services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for injuries, colics and any other problems that may require our immediate attention.

Diagnostic Services

Rossdales remains at the forefront of the diagnosis of racehorse injuries and illness. Our veterinary surgeons play a key role in the early detection and prevention of injuries by carrying out thorough lameness and poor performance investigations.

Upper and lower airway disease is another important common cause of poor performance in racehorses. During visits to your yard we can routinely perform endoscopic examinations, often obtaining tracheal wash samples, the latter of which are analysed by our own world- renowned specialist laboratory to enable rapid turnaround of results. This allows quick, correct and efficient treatment and management protocols to be instigated. Similarly, routine blood samples can be analysed promptly by our laboratory to allow management decisions to be made in time to meet entry and declaration deadlines.

Our state-of-the-art VetMed over-ground dynamic endoscopic system enables the function of the upper airway to be assessed under normal exercise conditions. Visible malfunction and pathology may be diagnosed. This dynamic endoscopic procedure is commonly combined with an ECG examination allowing an assessment of heart function to be made concurrently. This procedure provides a quick and accurate diagnosis of a multitude of well recognised (and less well recognised) conditions affecting this critical region of the performance horse.

Combining clinical skills with access to the latest mobile digital radiographic and ultrasonographic imaging equipment, our racing team can diagnose and treat a wide variety of orthopaedic problems at stable yards. However, if further investigation is required, horses can be referred directly to our team of expert clinicians at our Equine Diagnostic Centre, where advanced imaging techniques available include nuclear scintigraphy (bone scanning), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT).

Surgical and Medical services

Rossdales’ clients have direct access to the support of our hospital facility. Complex surgery such as fracture repairs or colic surgery is carried out by our skilled team of specialist surgeons in our fully-equipped operating theatres. Our standing surgery suite now enables us to carry out a variety of surgical procedures on standing sedated horses, under local analgesia, overcoming the need for a general anaesthetic.

Our specialist internal medicine clinicians are available for more complex medical and neurological cases. These clinicians are available to provide in-stable support with mobile diagnostic equipment, or at our Equine Diagnostic Centre, as appropriate to the case.

For more information about our horses-in-training service, please contact Neil Steven, Mike Shepherd, Pete Ramzan, Rob Dallas or Tim Hawthorne on 01638 663150.