My vet has a clinic AND makes ranch calls. Office visit is $30. Ranch call is $60. Vet is 12 miles away. Figure in time to load/unload stock, gas, and the situation to decide whether a ranch call is worth it.
My vet believes in bio-security, she doesn't come to the farm with manure on her shoes from other farms.
With vets, you either want one that is really goat savvy, or one that will sell you prescription medications on the cheap and doesn't get prissy about a "lay-person" doing their own vetting. The likelihood of a really goat-savvy vet being within decent driving distance is fairly slim...even livestock vets are dumb and mute when it comes to goats. Not their fault. We have less than 0.3% of the worlds goats; there simply aren't enough goat operations in this country for vets to get enough experience with them.
So, unless you have been REALLY blessed with a goat savvy vet, your best bet is to get one that you can call up and say, "Yeah, the one I wasn't sure of a due date on? She's kidding and having trouble. I don't know if it is early or not, and I wasn't expecting anyone to pop before the first of the month, so I need to swing by and pick up oxytocin, Banamine, Bo-Se, and Lutelyse. Thanks so much! Oh, and some thiamine!"
To find out if your vet is goat savvy, ask about goat diseases. What lab do they use for CAE and CL tests? What do they think of testing for Johnne's disease yearly? Answers such as, "I'll call you back with that info" or "Let me get back to you on that" means they aren't goat savvy and don't know off the top of their heads, and therefore they are going to go look it up and parrot the info at you from their books.
Find out if they are goat savvy first. Can they tell you what symptoms to look for in possible CAE cases WITHOUT going to look it up? If not, they are NOT goat savvy and therefore should at least be Rx generous.
