Knowing what best to feed your pet can be a minefield, with so many diets available and so many people claiming they know best. The truth is there are only a handful of veterinary specialist nutritionists in the UK and no protection of the term ‘nutritionist’.
Despite what many would have you believe vets and veterinary nurses are taught about nutrition in detail, but it is also an area you can study further. This is exactly what Veterinary Nurse Laura Sproul has been doing as she nears the end of her certificate in small animal nutrition. Essentially Laura really knows her stuff, and the rest of the team refer nutrition queries to her.
All our nursing team offer free weight/body condition score checks and advice for pets who are overweight, as this is such an important welfare area.
In addition Laura offers a range of nutrition consultations and follow up advice, for a fee of £20. These are the areas she can help with:
- Patients that have been recommended therapeutic diets e.g. kidney diets, hydrolysed diets for allergies.
- Patients that would benefit from therapeutic diets to ease symptoms e.g. skin or digestive issues.
- General advice on life-stage feeding.
- Advice on choosing and assessing diets, including terms used on pet food and how to read food labels.
- Advice on the pros and cons of feeding niche diets such as: plant based, insect protein and raw diets to enable owners to make an educated decision prior to changing to these diets.
To book an appointment with Laura, contact us via email, WhatsApp or phone.
Formulating and feeding homemade diets requires specialist advice, we can refer to a board-certified Specialist. Feeding a homemade diet requires great care, especially for growing animals, and there are serious risks associated with feeding an unbalanced diet.
You can find out more about nutrition and access various factsheets, and further links on our nutrition page.