Celebrating 10 years of growth - Westpoint Veterinary Group

®
2000 - 2010
Celebrating 10 years of growth
Special report
produced by
www.southeastfarmer.net 33
South East Farmer - September 2010

Even the most hard-working
and dedicated businessman
needs a lucky break now and
again, and for Rob Drysdale it
came on day one.
Rob, now at the head of the
biggest farm animal practice in
the country, is the first to admit
that a series of fortunate events
helped to kickstart his now
thriving business.
“When I decided to set up on
my own I moved the required
15 miles from where I had been
working and decided to look
for premises in Warnham,” he
explained.
“I knocked on the door of one
of the local business units and
was told that they were owned
by a local famer, so I went up
the road to what turned out to be the wrong
farm.
“There, sat on his tractor in the yard,
unable to go anywhere because he was
waiting for a mechanic to come and fix the
machine, I found Harry Hewlett.
“As it turned out, the units I had visited
were nothing to do with Harry, but when I
told him why I wanted to rent some space
he took me to meet his wife Cindy. It turned
out that he had fallen out with his own vet
that morning and was wondering where to
go for a replacement.
WESTPOINT VETERINARY GROUP
One lucky break –
lots of hard work
“After a cup of coffee and a chat they
offered me part of their own farm office as
a base for the new practice – and the rest is
history.”
Ten years and plenty of shuffles, building
conversions and moves later, Westpoint
Veterinary Practice still has its headquarters
at Ruckmans Farm, the scene of that
first coincidental meeting.
“It was an amazingly lucky break. I ended
up with office space, my first customer
and access to plenty more.” That wasn’t
all he gained from that first meeting.
“Cindy became my first secretary and their
daughter Aimee took over the job a bit later
on.”
It was a great start, but it doesn’t explain
how Rob’s business, Westpoint Veterinary
Group, has gone on to become the largest
of its kind in the UK, headed up since July
2009 by directors John Mouncey, Paul Horwood,
Julian Dare, Matt Dobbs and Rob
himself.
“The story from day two and beyond is
down to the usual mix of hard work, good
planning and being supported by a great
team,” Rob explained. “It’s also down to
the fact that we specialise in production
animals, focus on keeping our overheads
down and offer a local service while also
benefiting from the economies of scale that
go with a bigger practice.
It’s not surprising that Westpoint uses
“National strengths – local service” as its
company strapline, or that it claims to be
“Getting bigger by being better” – two aspirations
that are more than just slogans.
Continued on page 37
Left to right, Jason Davies, marketing manager, Rob Drysdale and Matt Dobbs, directors
www.southeastfarmer.net South East Farmer - September 2010

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Continued from page 35
Rob still spends time visiting
farmers, and the main reason
behind his steady expansion is
not the commercial opportunities
offered by new locations
but the fact that he doesn’t want
WESTPOINT VETERINARY GROUP
Farmers appreciate
transparent drugs pricing
to be more than 40 minutes away from the
animals he looks after.
“At the end of the day I became a vet
because I care about animals and their
health. I don’t want to be in a position
where an animal is suffering and I don’t
have anyone close enough to go and treat
it quickly,” he explained. “Our expansion
programme is based on filling in gaps so
that we can get to where we need to be in a
reasonable amount of time.
Westpoint also wins new customers
because of its transparent approach to drug
pricing. Rob believes that in the past some
vets kept their professional fees unrealistically
low by making an unreasonably large
profit on the drugs they supplied.
This cross-subsidy made them appear to
be offering a lower-priced service while
forcing the farmer to make up the difference
by paying too much for the products
he then had to buy.
“I decided that I would be far more
transparent about the prices I was buying
and selling my drugs for and tell my clients
that they would have to pay slightly
more for my professional fees because I
wasn’t making a killing on the drugs,” he
explained.
That policy has paid off, since the now
wide availability of online drug companies
means that farmers know what they
should be paying for drugs and appreciate
the transparency this brings.
In 2006 Rob took that transparency a
step further by starting Farmacy.co.uk,
one of the UK’s leading online farm medicine
providers. “Because of the scale of the
business we can negotiate great prices for
the medicines we provide and so farmacy.
co.uk set out to provide responsible, cost
effective medicines and advice over the
internet,” he explained.
Farmacy.co.uk is available not just to
Westpoint customers but to any farmer
who wants to sign up to the service and
buy medical supplies and treatments from
a reliable online supplier.
Westpoint demonstrates its commitment
to agriculture and animal welfare by supporting
a number of groups and organisations.
Rob sits on the West Sussex Grasslands
Committee and is heavily involved with
the local National Farmers’ Union and the
South East Holstein Club.
Westpoint also supports the Royal Agricultural
Society of England and was
chosen as the show vets for their AgriLIVE
event at Stoneleigh Park in 2009 and again
this year.
The practice is represented within local
and national animal welfare organisations
such as the South East Animal Health and
Welfare Group and The English Cattle
Health and Welfare Group, as well as sitting
on the calf export panel set up by
the RSPCA and Compassion in World
Farming.
Westpoint believes the future of farming
revolves around training and educating
staff and farmers.
Chairman of the Westpoint board Matt
Dobbs explained: “Farmers want to be able
to do more themselves, and by working
with our clients we can provide them with
the skills and knowledge they need.”
The practice has worked on behalf of
farmers with major supermarkets and
processors to help these bodies promote
confidence among consumers as well as
high standards of animal welfare.
Continued on page 38
Rob carrying out semen analysis on farm
www.southeastfarmer.net South East Farmer - September 2010

WESTPOINT VETERINARY GROUP
Continued from page 37
“ M i l k p r i c e s w i l l b e
increasingly linked to the
health and welfare of the
animals, which means that
by improving the health of
our clients’ livestock we are
giving them the best chance
of getting top prices for their
product,” said Matt.
Some of Westpoint’s customers
have 30 cows and
ot hers have 1200-st rong
herds. “We make sure both
herds are equally well looked
after,” said Rob. “We are
just as happy working with
small farmers or those who
just have a few animals on a
smallholding as we are with
bigger concerns.”
Westpoint also offers a technical
service that includes
such things as foot trimming,
helping with stock movement
and vaccinations. There are
four technicians across the
country – three of them in
the South East – and each
of them is registered with
the National Association of
Cattle Foot Trimmers.
“The reason behind such a
wide-ranging offer is simple,”
said Rob. “A cow that is
well looked after will produce
more milk. We help the
farmer to produce happier
cows with more pregnancies,
less mastitis and less lameness.
The end result of all that
is a more efficient business.”
Rob also works with Blade
Farming, a company that is
encouraging farmers to take
in black and white calves
that would otherwise be
slaughtered, finish them efficiently
and sell them as beef
for a reasonable price. “We
have already made inroads
into the estimated 400,000
Holstein and Friesian bull
calves that used to simply be
shot but there is still work to
be done,” he said.
Westpoint Veterinary Group
and Blade are both members
of the Beyond Calf Export
Stakeholders Forum that is
trying to end the wasteful
practice of destroying the
calves or exporting them to
overseas veal producers.
“As a vet there is nothing
worse than doing a Caesarean
operation on a cow,
delivering a perfectly healthy
black and white bull calf and
then having it shot while
you are still sewing up the
mother,” Rob commented.
Caring for business
as well as animals
Fred and Barney born at Ruckmans
Whatever the James Herriot-inspired public
view of vets may be, much of Westpoint’s work is
about giving farmers proactive advice designed
to keep animals healthy and productive rather
than simply caring for them when they are
unwell.
“Modern veterinary practice is more about
working in partnership with the farmer to maximise
yield and profits than it is about waiting
for animals to get sick and then making them
better,” said managing director Rob Drysdale.
A good example of the groundbreaking work
Westpoint is doing in this field is its Profit
Improvement Plans (PIPs) now offered not just
to dairy but also to both sheep and beef farmers.
These plans focus as much on improving yield
Paul Horwood
through more efficient practices as they do on
ensuring the health of the animals involved.
The Sheep PIP and the entry-level Westpoint
Sheep Club aim to give both smallholders and
large-scale sheep producers – a flexible approach
to catering for your precise veterinary requirements
throughout the year.
They set out to spread the costs of keeping the
flock healthy, provide a designated sheep vet and
back-up and include membership of discussion
groups and access to advice as well as health
care advice and discounts off veterinary medicines.
The PIP includes a number of options including
ram fertility testing, lameness management,
blood sampling for such things as nutritional
status and parasite monitoring
and control, as well as a dedicated
newsletter, Sheep Newes.
The beef PIP states that it recognises
“the fragile balance
between developing your business
while maintaining cost
effective production” and offers
what the company describes as
“a flexible approach to catering
for your precise veterinary
requirements throughout the
year.”
Ashford based director Paul
Horwood explained: “Whether
you are a large scale commercial
beef producer or small
pedigree suckler unit it is possible
to specifically devise each
Beef Profit Improvement Plan to
cater for any enterprise.”
Continued on page 41
South East Farmer - September 2010
38

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South East Farmer - September 2010

There’s a simple reason why
young vets who join the Westpoint
veterinary Group are
given greater levels of support
than they might expect elsewhere.
“It’s called practice, not perfect,”
explained company boss
Rob Drysdale, referring to the fact that
newly-qualified vets who join their first
practice still have a lot to learn from firsthand
experience and from more senior colleagues.
Rob and Matt set up an internship programme
at Westpoint in 2003 because they
wanted to be able to instill their own beliefs
and ideas into the team they were running.
“If you take on a vet from elsewhere it can
take a long time to change habits that don’t
fit in with your own way of doing things,”
Matt explained.
“It’s also expensive to advertise every
time you need a new member of staff and
we like to keep our overheads low in order
to deliver the most cost-effective, high
quality service we can to our farmers.”
With 36 vets now doing things the Westpoint
way, it is clear that getting to that
stage would be much more costly and take
much more time and effort if the company
relied on advertising for new staff and then
re-training them.
“By taking new vets straight after graduation
it means we have a regular influx of
bright, keen people with up to date skills
who can quickly be shown how to deliver
the high standard of care and professionalism
that our customers expect,” Rob
explained.
The system is already paying dividends
by providing Westpoint with the best
young vets. Alex Walters first picked up
experience with the company in 2004
and joined as an intern immediately after
graduating from the University of Bristol
in 2006.
Continued from page 39
In keeping with the proactive ambitions
of the programme, the beef PIP is based
on three core veterinary services of pregnancy
diagnosis, herd health planning
and bull fertility testing, with the option
of adding services including lameness
management, castration and de-horning,
pre-breeding examinations, parasite control
and calf health management.
“The plan is designed to allow the
farmer to target areas of improvement
for their individual enterprise while
remaining affordable,” Paul explained.
“The process allows a structured
approach to improving farm performance
by setting targets, achieving them
and monitoring the results.”
The PIP includes discounts, designated
veterinary support and membership
of the Westpoint Beef Club, which
provides discussion groups, farm walks
and copies of the new quarterly newsletter
Meat & 2 Vets.
James Dixon
WESTPOINT VETERINARY GROUP
‘Home-grown’ vets
produce better results
Now based at Westpoint’s practice at
Ashford in Kent, Alex has just been named
Young Consultant of the Year 2010 by the
British Institute of Agricultural Consultants
(BIAC).
Westpoint’s first intern was James Dixon,
who joined in 2003 and did so well that in
2009 he was offered the chance to move to
Derbyshire, where he now runs the group’s
Ashbourne practice in Weston Underwood.
He is also a partner in the business.
Westpoint now sponsors six interns a year
as part of a joint venture partnership with
the Royal Veterinary College, a system that
means the group continues to benefit from
some of the country’s brightest and best
veterinary graduates.
New vets are paired up with experienced
people so that they are not “dropped in
at the deep end” but instead benefit from
three months of support and mentoring
that helps them turn theory into practice.
“In the old days it used to be ‘see one,
do one, teach one’; now it’s more like ‘see
six, do one with help but you won’t have to
teach one for at least a year’,” said Rob.
www.southeastfarmer.net 41
South East Farmer - September 2010

WESTPOINT VETERINARY GROUP
westpoint veterinary group
Farm animal practices
covering the South East
Each of our local practices provide the following services:
• Routine and first opinion work • Milk quality monitor
• Local 24 hour emergency cover • Mastitis consultancy
• Direct line to experienced vet • Bull and ram testing
at any time – free of charge • Foot trimming and mobility services
• Flock and herd health contracts • Benchmark and discussion groups
• Flock and herd health planning • Farmer education and training
• Routine fertility and scanning
We pride ourselves on delivering a professional and caring service
Call us now to arrange a free initial visit
Westpoint
covering Surrey and Sussex
01306 628086
Westpoint Bridgets
covering Hampshire
01962 779593
Westpoint Sevenoaks
covering North Kent and East Sussex
01959 564383
Westpoint Midhurst
covering West Sussex and Hampshire
01730 815221
Farmers more likely to
change banks than vets
While Westpoint’s first home in
the office of Warnham farmer
Harry Hewlett came about
through a series of coincidences,
expansion since then
has been carefully planned
and strategic.
The company has grown to be
the largest UK veterinary group
specialising in production animals,
with 12 practices that
stretch as far north as Penrith
in Cumbria and as far west as
St Columb in Cornwall.
In the south of the country the
expansion has been carefully
designed to fill in gaps between
existing practices so that no
farm – and, more importantly,
no animal in need of urgent
attention – is more than 40
minutes or so away from the
care that Westpoint provides.
“It’s vital to us to keep close
to our customers and their
animals,” said Rob Drysdale.
“We are driven by a desire to
look after livestock – that’s
why we became vets. We have
Northpoint
covering Essex and South Suffolk
01306 628489
Eastpoint
covering Kent and East Sussex
01306 628208
Blade Farming are pleased to have
been associated with Westpoint
during their first ten years and wish
them success in the future
in the past turned farms down
because we felt t hey were
too far away from the nearest
Westpoint practice to allow us
to give them the right level of
service.”
It is that love of animals and
the job they are qualified to
do that means Rob and his
colleague Matt Dobbs, who
is chairman of the Westpoint
board of directors, both spend
three days a week on farm as
well as doing their share of
overnights and call outs.
“We both see many clients
on a weekly basis and many
of our clients have become
friends over the years,” said
Matt. “Westpoint prides itself
on its close relationship with
the farmers it serves and it recognises
that the farming community,
perhaps more than any
other, places a huge amount of
importance on mutual trust.
“Don’t forget that farmers
aren’t trusting us with their
pet cat, however important
some people’s pets may be to
them. They are trusting us with
their livelihood, the animals
on whose health their whole
business depends. That level
of trust is such that farmers are
more likely to change banks
than vets.”
Such loyalty makes Westpoint’s
remarkable growth even
more impressive and reflects
the company’s focus on providing
a specialist service that
delivers quality care at a fair
price.
“Because we only deal with
production animals we have
lower overheads than practices
that also have to provide
a receptionist and a waiting
room and all the other things
vets need if they are looking
after dogs, hamsters, rabbits
and canaries as well as farm
animals,” said director Jon
Mouncey.
“Westpoint vets can dispense
with all that because they do
all their work out on farm, and
because they are only concentrating
on production animals
they are able to build up a
really specialised knowledge
base about that one area.”
After setting up on his own
in October 2000, Rob was soon
looking for an assistant and it
soon became clear that a corner
of the Ruckmans Farm office
simply wasn’t big enough for
the growing enterprise.
The practice moved into a
converted calf shed on the same
farm – the first of a number
of reshuffles and expansions
– and before long there were
three Westpoint vets as word
spread and new clients realised
the benefits on offer.
By 2003 the company was
employing five vets who were
having to travel widely – too
widely – to deliver the service
to a growing customer base.
“Once we were having to
travel more than 40 minutes to
provide responsive care to the
animals we were looking after
it was clear that we needed
a second office closer to our
clients, which is when we
opened up the Eastpoint practice
at Barrow Hill in Ashford,”
explained Rob.
Northpoint in Dunmow,
Specialising in:
Rearing high health
status weaned calves
for sale to Beef farmers
Forward pricing contracts
for all types of Finished cattle
A developing market
for Aberdeen Angus cattle
Science • Commitment • Results
Contact Blade Farming for more details on 08456 013281 or visit
www.blade-farming.com
South East Farmer - September 2010
42
020.032 Westpoint SouthEast 133x93 Ad.indd 1 22/09/2009 10:09

headed up by Jules Dare, was
the next practice to open under
the banner of the Westpoint
Veterinary Group. Three years
later the company moved into
Sussex when it took over a
practice in Midhurst now managed
by associate director Keith
Baxter and set up its first purpose-built,
on-farm facility.
That was followed by the
opening of the Bridgets facility
at Martyr Worthy, near Winchester
in Hampshire. The
Midhurst and Bridgets practices
now work closely together
to prov ide comprehensive
overlap cover in that part of the
country – a good example of the
Westpoint approach.
Midhurst is also home to
Bridgelands Laboratory Services,
which include a national
mastitis service. “We weren’t
getting cost effective or reliable
enough results from outside
companies so we now have two
full time staff doing testing inhouse
and giving us a cheaper
and better service,” said Rob.
There are three other Westpoint
practices in the south
west of the country, with eight
vets operating from Launceston
and St Columb in Cornwall and
Okehampton in Devon.
Hatfield in Hertfordshire,
Ashbourne in Derbyshire, Penrith
in Cumbria and, closer to
home, Sevenoaks in Kent make
Consultancy advice
aimed at healthy profits
Westpoint has a specific consultancy service designed to give
farmers pro-active herd and flock health management solutions
with the aim of maximising farm profits.
Work includes examining farm economics and disease losses as
part of a bespoke livestock business review, helping to improve
milk production levels and milk quality, controlling mastitis
through preventative treatment and improving nutritional management.
Safavet Advert_SVD 24/08/2010 10:37 Page 1
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SUPPLYING VETERINARY CONSUMABLES
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Westpoint Veterinary Group
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12 Cumbria Plumpton, Penrich CA11 9PF
up the rest of the Westpoint
practices that now cover much
of the country.
“As soon as we move into a
new location and people see
what we are offering we attract
new customers,” said Rob. “We
are careful to try to place our
new practices in places that fill
in gaps between existing facilities
so that we can provide
good 24 hour cover to all our
clients.”
Some of those clients have
come on board as a result of
acquisitions, which makes it
vital that Westpoint quickly
demonstrates the additional
value they can deliver, which is
where transparent pricing
has been shown to be so
important.
The group now has about
2,500 farmers on its books
in total, with between
200 and 300 clients
receiving a weekly visit
from their dedicated
vet and another 700 being
seen at least monthly as part
of the company’s commitment
to offering
proactive support
and advice.
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www.southeastfarmer.net 43
South East Farmer - September 2010

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