Small World Vet Centre

31/07/2025

WELLNESS PLAN UPDATE!

As you may know, we make a 'climate contribution' equivalent to the annual carbon-pawprint of all the pets subscribed to our wellness plans, at the end of each year of membership.
https://www.smallworldvets.co.uk/climate-contributions

The total to date (to the end of June) comes to 51 Tonnes of CO2, either directly removed from the atmosphere or emissions prevented, which is just brilliant and is ramping up every month as more clients join.

Add to that the contributions we make each month as a practice to offset our (already nailed-down) emissions, plus our funding of conservation projects locally and globally. With your help, we are making a genuinely positive environmental impact- something it has always been our mission to do.

Take a look at our Ecologi profile where you can click on the 'tiles' to see what projects have been funded and their impact on tackling the climate crisis (scroll down... and keep scrolling!).
https://ecologi.com/smallworldvetcentre

This, and our award-winning approach to parasite treatment, is what makes our plans unique. THANK YOU to all our pioneering pet owners who have jumped onboard!

Check out Small World Vet Centre's Ecologi profile: 3,136 trees funded, 374.3 tonnes CO₂e avoided and 12 tonnes CO₂e removed

17/03/2025

ARE YOU WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR?

Updated 31/7/25

Martine and Eden have joined as a our first VCAs and we have just welcomed Hannah to our nursing team. Beth and Emily are on their way as our new vets. However, with exciting plans ahead, we still have a couple of posts to fill to help us on our way. So, if you are looking for a position in a progressive, independent practice that puts 'One Health' into action...
.. and you are a dedicated RVN looking for either a full-time OR part-time position where you can follow your interests into providing nurse-led services...
.. or you are that special person who can lead our nursing team through these exciting times, ensuring that protocols are developed and adapted, and patient care is enhanced, as our Lead RVN...
.. then take a look here for more details. We can't wait to hear from you!

https://www.smallworldvets.co.uk/work-with-us

12/03/2025

WELLNESS PLAN NEWS!

As you may know, we make a 'climate contribution' equivalent to the annual carbon-pawprint of all the pets subscribed to our wellness plans, at the end of each year of membership.

https://www.smallworldvets.co.uk/climate-contributions

We launched the plans in late 2023, and so our early adopters have been completing their first year, and the carbon savings are mounting up! The total to date comes to 38,000kg of CO2, either directly removed from the atmosphere or emissions prevented.

Take a look at our Ecologi profile where you can click on the 'tiles' to see what projects have been funded and their impact on tackling the climate crisis (scroll down... and keep scrolling!).

https://ecologi.com/smallworldvetcentre

This, and our award-winning approach to parasite treatment, is what makes our plans unique. THANK YOU to all our pioneering pet owners who have jumped onboard!

Check out Small World Vet Centre's Ecologi profile: 2,812 trees funded, 316.3 tonnes CO₂e avoided and 9 tonnes CO₂e removed

25/12/2024

Wishing all of our wonderful clients and, of course, your fabulous pets, a very happy Christmas!

Thank you for your entrusting your loved companions to us over another year.

25/10/2024

GUINEA PIG AWARENESS- The final chapter!

In this last installment, we’d like to highlight the incredible work of all piggy rescues across the UK. We are very privileged to work with some amazing charities in the area who rescue, rehome and offer boarding and bonding services to guinea pigs. These organisations play an important role in promoting welfare and reducing suffering of what are often quite forgotten animals. We are sure you’d agree that piggies are characterful, fascinating animals and deserve the best!

As mentioned before, guinea pigs are very social animals with complicated social structures. If you have been unfortunate enough to have lost a piggy and are left with a lone pet, consider approaching a local rescue to see if they offer a bonding service. Adopting a 'piggy in need' can be very rewarding – many charities will also offer a bonding service where your pet will be matched with the best suited companion often ensuring a more successful bond. It is also less stressful than doing it yourself!
If you are considering adopting, check out this guide on how to prepare for the experience.

We hope you've enjoyed these 'piggy posts'!

18/10/2024

MORE Guinea Pig Awareness!

This time it's all about dental health. We’ve talked all about the importance of good nutrition and enrichment, but what do we actually need to look out for? Sometimes we could be doing everything correctly and our piggies might still get sick. Guinea pigs are prey species and will hide signs of pain and illness as long as possible (the weak ones get picked off!), so detection of illness may be quite challenging. This is why regular observation of your pets, weekly weight checks, and familiarising ourselves with what our piggies look like is important.

One of the subtlest, but important signs of illness is weight loss. Variations of 30-50 grams in body weight are relatively normal, however if this is progressive then an underlying problem may be present. Make sure your piglets are weighed regularly and that this is recorded – be that on your phone or a notebook. Most digital kitchen scales are suitable for this and it can be done at the same time as their enclosure clean out.

Whilst guinea pigs have 20 teeth in total, only the front four incisors can be easily visualised. You can do this by just observing them as their mouths usually hang open or very gently pulling on the top and lower lip. Any deviation or uneven wear should always be examined by a piggy savvy vet!

14/10/2024

STAFF TRAINING

Dear all, we will be closed briefly this coming Friday from 11.30am-1pm for staff meetings. We are of course available for emergencies- just call us as normal and we'll swing into action- but the door will be locked for this short period.

Thanks for your understanding.

09/10/2024

GUINEA PIG AWARENESS WEEK- extended!

It may be over but we've still some good stuff to share with you. This time we'd like to talk a little bit more about 'enrichment'. This term refers to providing an environment, ideally as close to that of their wild counterparts, in which a captive animal can express their full range of natural behaviours. It's a big deal in zoo collections but sadly often neglected for pets, leading to stress and poor health.

By now we all understand why the correct diet is so important to our piglets. But is serving up everything on a silver platter sufficient to keeping our friends happy? Certainly not! Guinea pigs are grazing animals. In their natural environment, they spend most of their days grazing and foraging for tasty food. This means that in captivity, when kept in smaller enclosures, they may be at risk of becoming overweight as well as bored.

As a social species they should be kept in pairs and groups, but boredom and frustration may lead to difficulties with bonding and upset within even the most well bonded groups.

There are many things around our households that we can use for enrichment – making it slightly more difficult and enjoyable for our piggies to feed and encouraging normal behaviour expression. If you don’t feel you have the time for this on a regular basis then getting rid of feeding bowls and scatter feeding vegetables and nuggets, then covering them with a layer of hay can also encourage our piggies to move more. Check out this poster for a guide on how to make exciting toys by using things like toilet paper rolls!

26/09/2024

GUINEA PIG AWARENESS WEEK- continued...

In the last post we touched a little bit on diet and now we’d like to highlight why that is so important. A healthy and well-balanced diet is key to getting our furry friends to thrive! But what makes guinea pigs so unique?

To put it simply, guinea pigs are tiny little fermenting machines! Due to their constantly growing teeth they have adapted to eating low calorie, high fibre diets consisting primarily of hay and grass. But as these things are generally quite low in nutrition, piglets ferment a fair amount of what they eat in their bellies.

A portion of the ingested food will enter a blind ending chamber called the caecum where bacteria will ferment the food producing vital nutrients like vitamins B12 and K. This will lead to formation of special droppings called caecotrophs which guinea pigs will then re-ingest to maximise the benefit of what they have eaten. Isn’t that clever!

Diets which are not high in fibre such as muesli or excessive nuggets can lead to dysbiosis (an inbalance in the populations of bacteria and other microbes in the gut) and overgrown teeth – medical issues which are best avoided. But is

feeding hay and nuggets the only key to success? Stay tuned whilst we explore this tomorrow!

26/09/2024

IT IS GUINEA PIG AWARENESS WEEK!

This year’s theme is Nibble, Nourish, and Thrive. Just as we did during Rabbit Awareness Week, we will be sharing lots of tips and tricks with you on how to keep your piggies happy and healthy. We absolutely love seeing guinea pigs at our practice and value how cherished they are by so many of their owners.

Today let’s talk a little bit about the correct diet. Check out this useful guide from Burgess Excel on the ultimate diet composition for your piggies.

There are of course many more companies in the UK which produce appropriate nuggets and treats including Supreme and Oxbow. Regardless of which ones your piggies like most, variety is key to happy and healthy piglets and nuggets should only constitute a small portion of their diet. It is important to remember that indoor and outdoor piggies may have slightly different nutritional needs and if your herd lives indoors consider swapping them to the Indoor Guinea Pig Nuggets by Excel. To reduce the risks of selective feeding, which may predispose to dental disease, it is important muesli diets are avoided or, if fed, slowly phased out if possible. Any dietary changes should however be made slowly.

We look forward to sharing more with you in the following days!

02/09/2024

CHANGE OF EMAIL ADDRESS

Our email address has changed! It is now:

[email protected]

Any emails to our old address will be received for a little while before we close that account completely.

As mentioned last time, we encourage you to use PetsApp for routine enquiries whenever possible.

Thanks for bearing with us during the transition- IT upgrades are rarely as straight-forward as they first seem!