Smallholders
As a smallholder, you may have a wide range of animals in your herd and flock! We are renowned for our award winning equine health services, but did you know we provide services and information on testing hens and domestic poultry, sheep, cows, goats and other grazing animals for parasites too!
As custodians of the land we know you will also appreciate our commitment to the environment and we've made as much of our packaging biodegradable as possible.
This has enabled us to reduce our waste to landfill by 75%! We compost it on our farm in Northumberland and plan to use it for new tree planting on a 73 acre nature reserve we're establishing here. Not only does this create a place for nature but means a test with Westgate is carbon positive.
When it comes to worm egg counts not all tests are created equal – here at Westgate we have a purpose built laboratory specialising in worm egg counts for grazing animals and we test thousands of samples every week. We have rigorous processes to ensure you get the correct result for each animal using the industry standard ‘Modified McMaster test’ process to generate your result.
All samples are tested on the day they are received in the lab with results returned on the same day too!
Other grazing animals
We also provide testing services for the main parasites in grazing animals including sheep, cattle, goats, llama and alpaca. As well as a standard worm egg counts we offer specific tests for liver fluke and lungworm for these animals. These tests use different solutions/techniques to target the eggs of these specific parasites - although liver fluke and lungworm can (and do!) appear in standard worm egg counts these tests they are more likely to show up in these tests where they're present. We will always list ANY parasite eggs seen in a sample.
We work with over 200 shops, retailers, vets and SQPs to provide our worm counts as a service in store near you. When we carry out worm counts on any animal we will always report the number and type of worms seen in the sample.
Find out more here about what we test for: Grazing Animal Test Services
Our SQP’s in the lab are J and A qualified which means they are legally qualified to prescribe wormers for Equines and Avians – for other species you will need to consult your vet if you require further advice on what to worm with.