Local vets star on small screen

Local vets star on small screen

13 November 2019

A NEW six-part BBC2 series featuring three different veterinary clinics, including ones based in Downpatrick and Castlewellan, starts this Friday evening.

Mountain Vets provides viewers with a ringside site as vets and their staff take care of family pets, livestock and wildlife in the idyllic countryside surrounding the Mournes where animals outnumber people ten to one.

Rising up from lakeshore lowlands to mountain peaks, the Mourne area is well known for its stunning natural beauty and traditional country life and the three practices cover the whole area, responding to more than 100 clinic cases and call outs each day.

Downpatrick’s Downe Vets, Castle Vets based in Castlewellan and the Banbridge-based Tullyraine Equine Clinic, all feature in the fascinating new series.

The programme makers say that a unique aspect of Mountain Vets is the fact that a number of different practices and male and female vets, each with their own speciality, feature in the series and viewers will get to know each one and follow the highs and sometimes incredibly harsh lows in the working life of rural vets.

In addition, viewers will also get to know the animals and their owners including dogs, cats, donkeys, hedgehogs, grey seals, racehorses, a rare five-legged calf, sniffer dogs, birds, sheep, cows and two superstar Northern Inuit hounds from Game of Thrones.

With spectacular footage of an area teeming with wildlife, the series began filming in March last year which marked the start of the birthing season and the busiest time of the year for many vets.

In this Friday evening’s first episode, Maurice King of Downe Vets — the oldest veterinary practice in Downpatrick — receives a call about an extraordinarily rare birth at a nearby farm.

In the practice clinic is terrier Finn who isn’t his normal self. Usually a very lively dog, his owner thinks he’s depressed and has noticed he’s not eating properly.    

Rachael Frew, Maurice’s most experienced vet, gets an emergency call to a smallholding, where a goat has been savagely attacked by Dennis, an aggressive rescue donkey.

Dennis is subsequently sent to the Tullyraine Equine Clinic in the heart of the countryside where senior veterinary surgeon, Inge D’Haese, is hoping castration will help.

Later that day, Maurice is called out to another ‘miracle birth’. A mare called Spring has unexpectedly had a foal during the night and owner Sabine has no idea how Spring became pregnant.

And local resident Carey spots a hedgehog weaving uncertainly along his path while taking his dogs out for a walk. Worried that there might be something wrong with his eyes, he brings it to see Rachael.

In Newcastle,, Maurice’s son, Cahir runs, Downe Vets’ smaller, sister practice. 

Cahir has an appointment with Boo, a pedigree bulldog whose owner would like her to breed but she’s been unable to do so naturally. Bulldog Bailey has also been booked in to provide the semen that Cahir must collect to inseminate Boo.

Over the course of the six weeks, veterinary practice doors are constantly revolving with an array of unusual and unexpected cases for the vets to treat.

And though things might not always go according to plan and tragedies do happen, the vets do everything they can for the animals in their care.

Mountain Vets gets its first network screening this Friday evening on BBC2 at 8pm.