Hillside Vet Services

04/09/2026

These prices haven't changed since the day we opened our doors. That's about to change — but you've got until the end of September to make sure it doesn't change for you.

When we launched Hillside Vet Services in February 2025, we set the pricing on our Annual Equine Health Packages based on what things cost us back then — fuel, medications, equipment, our time on the road.

Eighteen months on, almost everything behind the scenes has gone up. Significantly. We've absorbed as much of that as we possibly can, because we know what it's like to budget for your horse's care, and we didn't want to be the reason that budget blew out.

But we can't hold 2025 pricing on 2027 costs forever. So here's what we're doing about it, honestly:

📅 Our Annual Package prices are going up.

🔒 But if you lock in your package by 30 September 2026, you keep today's price. It doesn't matter if your actual appointment isn't until January 2027. Book the package now, and we honour the price you booked at.

And remember what we showed you a few posts back — even at today's price, you're already paying close to half what the same care costs booked separately. After the increase, that gap gets even wider. Locking in now isn't just about avoiding a price rise — it's about locking in the biggest gap between what you pay and what you get that this offer will ever have.

This isn't a gimmick or a "sale ends Sunday" trick. It's us trying to do right by the clients who've done right by us since day one — the ones who show up for their horses. You're the reason we've been able to keep these prices as low as we have for as long as we have.

If you've been meaning to get your horse onto a package, this is the window. After 30 September, new pricing applies to every new booking, regardless of appointment date.

📞 Message us or call the clinic to lock in your horse's package this week.

04/09/2026

Next gastroscope day!

🐴 Gastroscope Day — Wednesday 7th October

Is your horse trying to tell you something?

Equine gastric ulcers are common, and the signs can be subtle. Some horses continue to eat, work, and look “mostly normal” while still having clinically significant ulceration.

Signs that may suggest gastric ulcers include:

• Girthiness or sensitivity around the belly
• Behaviour changes under saddle
• Poor performance or reluctance to go forward
• Dull coat or poor condition
• Picky eating or reduced appetite
• Weight loss or difficulty maintaining weight
• Recurrent mild colic signs
• Changes after stress, travel, competition, injury, or training changes

At Hillside Vet Services, our gastroscope days allow us to properly assess the stomach and make an evidence-based treatment plan if ulcers are found.

Our next Gastroscope Day will be held on:

📅 Wednesday 7th October
📍 Beerwah Sportsground

Gastroscopy is the only way to accurately diagnose and grade equine gastric ulcers. Guessing, trial treating, or relying on behaviour alone can miss important information and may delay the right treatment plan.

If your horse has been showing signs of discomfort, poor performance, behaviour changes, or you simply want answers before the season ramps up, this is a great opportunity to book in.

📩 Message Hillside Vet Services to secure a spot for Gastroscope Day on Wednesday 7th October.

Limited spaces available.

02/09/2026

We priced out what it actually costs to book this the "normal" way — separate visits, separate call-outs, separate consult fees. The difference surprised even us.

Every one of these services has a standalone price. But nobody books a dental float, a farrier X-ray day, and a round of vaccinations as one visit if they're not on a package — realistically it's 2 to 4 separate appointments across the year. And every one of those appointments carries its own standard consultation fee on top of the procedure cost (before travel, which we haven't even added in).

Here's what that actually adds up to, using our own published pricing:

📊 Base — around $1,618 booked piece by piece, vs $829 as a package.
📊 Old Timers & Retirees — around $1,311 booked piece by piece, vs $829 as a package.
📊 Elevation — around $2,177 booked piece by piece, vs $1,099 as a package.
📊 Summit — around $2,531 booked piece by piece, vs $1,425 as a package.
📊 Performance — around $3,148 booked piece by piece, vs $1,762 as a package.

In every tier, the package works out to close to half what the same care costs booked separately — and that's before you count the travel/call-out fee that applies every single time a vet comes to your property, not just once a year.

Put another way: the Base Package works out to about $2.27 a day to have your horse's core health non-negotiables covered, on call-out priority, for a full year.

📩 Numbers speak louder than we can. Message us to lock in your package before 30 September.

31/08/2026

A vet visit is only part of what you're actually paying for.

Beyond the exams, the bloodwork and the vaccines, every Annual Package includes things that quietly save you time, money and stress all year round:

✅ One consolidated visit day, instead of four separate call-outs (and four separate call-out fees)
✅ Digital vaccination certificates, ready whenever an event or agistment centre asks for one
✅ A written, photographed record of your horse's dental and hoof findings — so you (and your farrier) are always working off the same information
✅ Priority scheduling and exclusive after-hours phone access

And coming soon: we're building a client portal, exclusive to our Annual Package families, with resources on first aid, bandaging, and day-to-day horse management — so the support doesn't stop when we drive off your property.

We built these packages to be worth more than the sum of their parts. That's the whole idea.

📩 Want all of this working for your horse? Message us to lock in your package.

30/08/2026

By the time you can see it, it's already been brewing for months.

Some of the most useful information about your horse's health never shows up as a limp, a dull coat, or weight loss — it shows up in bloodwork first, weeks or months before there's anything to see with the naked eye.

That's the thinking behind the screening and joint support built into our Old Timers & Retirees, Elevation, Summit and Performance packages:

🩸 Seasonal blood screening to build a baseline for your horse, so we know what "normal" looks like for them specifically — and can spot the moment something drifts from it.

🧬 Cushing's (PPID) testing for older horses, because the earlier it's caught, the easier it is to manage and the more comfortable your horse stays.

🦴 Joint support plans — 4Cyte or Arthropen, under vet guidance — to protect comfort and mobility through training blocks and the normal wear of getting older.

None of this is glamorous. It's quiet, unremarkable, in-the-background care. It's also exactly the kind of care that adds years of comfortable, sound work to a horse's life instead of an expensive scramble once something's already gone wrong.

📩 Want your horse's baseline on file before anything changes? Message us to book.

28/08/2026

Your 4-year-old eventer and your 24-year-old retiree don't need the same care plan. So we didn't build them one.

Every HVS Annual Package starts with the same non-negotiable foundation — dental, worming, core vaccination, hoof X-rays. From there, we built four paths depending on what your horse actually needs:

🐎 Old Timers & Retirees — Base care plus a geriatric blood profile and Cushing's (PPID) testing, because subtle hormonal changes in older horses show up in bloodwork months before you'd ever see them.

⛰️ Elevation — Base care plus Hendra vaccination and a gastroscopic exam, for horses at higher exposure risk or those we want to screen for gastric ulcers before performance is affected.

🏔️ Summit — Elevation plus Herpes (EHV) vaccination and a full Equine Performance Blood Profile, for the horse in regular work or travelling to events.

🚀 Performance — Summit plus an extended performance blood profile with inflammatory markers, and your choice of 4Cyte or Arthropen joint support — built for the horse being asked to perform, again and again.

Wherever your horse sits on that spectrum, there's a package that actually matches their life — not a one-size-fits-all box.

📩 Not sure which one fits? Tell us your horse's age and job and we'll point you to the right package.

26/08/2026

26/08/2026

It's 11pm. Your horse is colicking. Who do you call?

This is the one we get asked about the most, so let's be honest about it.

We can't be everything to everyone, every hour of every day — no mobile practice can, no matter how much we wish we could. What we can do is make sure the people who show up for their horses, every single time, know that we'll show up for them too.

That's why after-hours phone access is one of the biggest benefits built into our Annual Health Packages.

And to be really clear about something: when we say "our good clients," we don't mean the ones who spend the most. We mean the ones who do the right thing by their horse — who book the dental before it's an emergency, who keep the worming plan up to date, who ask the question instead of guessing. Those are the horses — and the people — we want to be there for at 11pm on a Tuesday.

If that sounds like you, this is why the package exists.

📩 Want that peace of mind for your horse? Message us to get started on a package.

24/08/2026

Four things. Every horse. Every year. No exceptions.

We built our Base Package around what we call the non-negotiables — the core care that protects every horse from the stuff that actually hurts them, whether they're a paddock pony or a Saturday competitor:

🦷 A full dental exam and float — sharp points and hooks cause pain most owners never see, until their horse is quidding, losing weight, or fighting the bit.

🪱 A Faecal Egg Count with a tailored worming plan — blanket deworming is outdated and it's breeding resistant parasites. We test first, then treat only what needs treating.

💉 Tetanus and Strangles vaccination — one is fatal, the other spreads through a whole paddock in days. Both are entirely preventable.

🩻 Yearly hoof X-rays with a written farrier report — because hoof balance is biomechanics, and by the time you can see a problem, it's often already cost your horse soundness.

All four, in one consolidated on-farm visit, for less than the cost of most single call-outs across the year.

This is our Base Package — the foundation every other package builds on.

📩 Ready to get your horse's non-negotiables sorted for the year? Send us a message to book your Base Package.

23/08/2026

🐴 Prevention beats a 2am phone call. Every time.

When we started Hillside Vet Services back in February 2025, we sat down and asked ourselves one question: what does every single horse actually need, every single year, to stay well?

Not what's trendy. Not what's upsold. What's non-negotiable.

That question became our Annual Equine Health Packages — and over the next few weeks we're going to walk you through exactly what's in them, why we built them this way, and why we think they're one of the best things you can do for your horse (and your wallet).

First up: the four things we believe every horse needs, no matter their age or job. Stay tuned. 👇

📩 Want to get ahead of the series? Message us any time to ask which package fits your horse.