Melbourne Vaccination costs

[Steph M]

Anyone have any suggestions for vets who do not charge the earth to vaccinate dogs? Just need the c5. Last time we got it done at cost at work, I cannot bring myself to pay ~90 bucks for it now!

[sandgrubber]

7 hours ago, Steph M said:

Anyone have any suggestions for vets who do not charge the earth to vaccinate dogs? Just need the c5. Last time we got it done at cost at work, I cannot bring myself to pay ~90 bucks for it now!

I'm far from VIC, and can easily buy the equivalent of C5 in the USA and do it myself (three dogs for $20 or $30); and there are several options for 'vaccination day' services at the flea market or local drug stores, where a vet does mass vaccinations for $20-$30 a shot.  It's bad that Australian vets take advantage of their monopoly access to vaccines.  When I lived in WA I found a mobile vet who was far more reasonable, especially because I had several dogs and she could get them all at once.   It might be worth calling around to local vets and a vet school to find out if anyone would be interested in doing a 'vaccination day'.  You might even find a local boarding kennel or feed store that would be enthusiastic about sponsoring such an event.

[RuralPug]

You are not permitted to buy or sell live vaccines online in Australia, so if you want C5 you are going to have to get it from a vet, which normally means a consult fee is included.

I'm not sure about other states, but in Victoria sometimes a vet will give up their day off to offer vaccinations and microchipping without a heath check, usually at a site outside of a clinic (greyhound tracks and relative's rural front yards are a couple I've seen LOL). This means their only overheads are the purchase cost of the vaccine/chips and their own time and generally means that will only be paying between 50% - 75% of the average vaccination cost. You WON'T get a health check or be able to ask about any other concerns, you WILL stand in line for hours and hours.

Some of these maverick vets do this regularly, some only annually, but you won't find them advertised anywhere. Word of mouth is spread in rural communities or by people in the greyhound industry.

You could choose to titre test instead, but that often costs more than the vacc and if the test comes back low on antibodies, you will need to vacc anyway.

My suggestion is to carefully space out the due dates so that each dog being due once every three years is due in a different year, so you only need to meet the cost for one dog each year. You are taking a risk by not vaccinating in the exact month/year due, but it is better than not vaccinating at all.

[Steph M]

I would titre, given admittedly this is their first vaccs since puppy ones (dogs are almost 4, so we are a bit behind, but they get a yearly vet check) but we need them to board in March, but titre testing at a decent cost are even higher, I am still on the lookout for that though, and in conversation with the boarding kennel over whether that would be sufficient. Haha. 

Just covering my bases. Some of the clinics I have called are up to 108. What the fudge...

Thanks for the suggestion, will pop on a few facebook groups and ask around. I like the idea of Maverick vets hahahaha