Great Western Exotic Vets

My first experience with Great Western Exotics was in September when I took my barn owl in for surgery. Since then I have been in multiple times for check ups and have seen a few different vets. My experience has been absolutely brilliant and I cannot thank them enough.nnThey have answered every panicked email on my behalf (and there have been a few) with a phone call almost immediately. It was worrying for me that I wasn't able to be in the appointments due to the pandemic however, he never came out stressed or bothered which assured me he was receiving excellent care whilst in there.nnEveryone from the receptionists and vets have made me feel comfortable and confident in his recovery and I cannot recommend them enough. Thank you!

I am writing this review so others can rely on their rights and insist on better care for their animals if they choose to use this surgery.nnWe took our parrot in today and this is very much a mixed review. I am writing this review as a very public request to take much better measures regarding your covid procedures, which at present are highly inadequate. The surgeon herself was very helpful, but the handover at the end was atrocious. The surgery were aware that we are inexperienced avian owners, and that I was nervous about the parrot undergoing general anaestethic. They put our minds at ease about this and I am grateful for that. However, given that the bird had undergone her first procedure at age 46, combined with our nervousness and inexperience, the end result was that the bird was literally dumped on the table outside in the rain by the nurse, who darted straight back inside. This is completely unacceptable. On any view. And the vetinary surgeon rightly and kindly apologised for this.nnThe questions I have are these:nn1. as a frontline service, why is the vets the ONLY frontline service to ban ALL pet owners from coming inside? To say this is company policy is shameful. You could very easily offer to charge us extra for PPE and accompany our vets, as other frontline services do, such as dentists, opticians etc. This company policy is not well thought out and seprates owners and pets needlessly, and in fact smacks of convenience to the company under cover of covid.nn2. If you are going to make us all stand outside with cages, where you take possession of the animals, why on earth can't you put a gazebo outside, so that your staff and customers and animals do not have to stand outside in the rain for the handover process?nn3. Can you overhaul your inadequate handover process. It is unacceptable to leave an animal on the table and run back inside because of the cold and the rain. A phonecall 20 minutes beforehand is insufficient, and is markedly different to handover. An acceptable handover would be - and it pains me to be having to point this out to you - 'Here is your parrot. Here is your medication - this is how long to take it for/how to administer it - these are red flag symptoms to look out for - here is our number if you have any questions'nnI will revise this review once these issues have been addressed.

6 months ago I adopted a African Pygmy Hedgehog from a boy who no longer had time for him. He was a very grumpy hedgehog and hated being touched at the time. When we got him home and settled we noticed that his front paw was a little sore and red so we were recommended to visit Great western exotics. Although its an hour drive for us we are so glad we went here! GWE discovered that our APH Rodney actually had nail infection and a dislocated toe from months ago which probably explained why he was so grumpy! We had Rodneys toe removed by GWE and although its been a long road to the end with almost 7 visits in 6 weeks but we are so so happy with the love and help our Rodney was given. We couldn’t recommend a better team. We saw 3 different vets which I cannot remember the names of all but Dr Dom is fabulous. As I write this we are on the way to our (hopefully) final appointment to have Rodneys stitches removed but he is a completely different hog now! So happy and playful so we thank GWE for that

Swindon Exotic Vets display a woeful lack of compassion and I would strongly discourage anyone who genuinely cares for their pet to use them. At 4am on the morning of 17/05/20 we spoke to our own vets regarding a chinchilla demonstrating the very concerning symptoms hind limb paralysis, seizures, lethargy, weakness and general lack of coordination/balance. They acknowledged that they did not feel they had either the knowledge or equipment to diagnose or treat properly so suggested visiting our nearest specialist exotic surgery, which just so happens to be Swindon Exotics, although it is still almost an hour’s drive for us. A phone call was duly made to SEV whose call centre said we could bring our chinchilla in to be looked at by an exotics vet, which we did. Approximately thirty minutes after handing the chinchilla over to the vet we were phoned by them who said that he ‘appeared normal’ and that they could ‘see nothing wrong’, but that they were only a small animals vet, so we could either take him home now or wait to see the exotics, but that this could not happen today. Were the call centre really so hungry for the £110.04 they wanted to charge for the ‘exotics triage’ (which didn’t actually happen!) that they felt the need to lie? Apparently so. Perhaps more worryingly one is left wondering how any fully compos mentis individual – let alone a so-called qualified vet – could look at an animal hunched up and behaving as our chinchilla was and say that there was nothing visibly wrong with it. Finally the individual we spoke to upon requesting the bill dismissed our concerns as ‘none of her business’, and did not really seem to care that we had a sick animal we wanted to take to a proper exotics vet, judging by the time she took to produce the invoice. I would not trust these people with a dead woodlouse.

had my greenwing macaw go here for he had swallowed 3 bits of metal which he got migh metal poisoning he tried to pass them but was unable to so in the end he had to be operated on to remove them by cutting into his stomach and all went OK and currently still recovering now on day 17 and loki getting back to his normal self couldn't thank the team here so much for there hard work and huge thanks out to Tom for doing such a great job on operation