Omg,vet Charges For Spays Are Highway Robbery!!!!!

Seryy'smom

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So I called all the local vets for price to spay my new fur baby...…$160-300! It is no wonder so many do not alter their pets at those INSANE prices!

Fortunately the Animal Clinic that my daughter uses only charges $95, so that is where I'm going even though it is an hour away!

So it seems like most doctors, most vets are out to get rich, most certainly not for affordable care! :(
 

lalagimp

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I've never used the vet for sterilizations.
The clinic chain in Phoenix area was really good and did discount spay/neuter and vaccinations and microchips.
The county offered free vouchers each month first come first serve for residents to use at the clinics, and you only paid for pain meds and shots if you wished.
I paid for Stewart outright without his voucher, because he was feral and I didn't know when the voucher was coming. It was about $50 to snip and medicate him.
 
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Seryy'smom

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Does the clinic do bloodwork? Normally the price of local vet offices will include bloodwork.
I'm not sure, but when my daughter had her vet-checked before giving her to me, she got her vaccinations and tests for feline leukemia and something else.
 
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Seryy'smom

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I've never used the vet for sterilizations.
The clinic chain in Phoenix area was really good and did discount spay/neuter and vaccinations and microchips.
The county offered free vouchers each month first come first serve for residents to use at the clinics, and you only paid for pain meds and shots if you wished.
I paid for Stewart outright without his voucher, because he was feral and I didn't know when the voucher was coming. It was about $50 to snip and medicate him.
Nothing like that around me.
 

kittyluv387

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A cheaper spay and neuter clinic wont normally do bloodwork. It's different from the snap test for flv and leukemia. There is nothing wrong with either option though!
 

FelisCatus

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The spay for one of my cats costed $400 CAD. This included pre-surgery bloodwork and an overnight stay.
 

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Rockets spay was in the $500-600 range. We did all the pretesting and she had a dedicated tech for recovery. Clinic can offer lower costs because they usually have fundraising, volunteers and grants to subsidized them. Private practices have to pay for everything within their fees.

Figure you have your vet and a tech dedicated to your cat for the procedure for 30 minutes. A tech let's say is $15 an hour and your vet is $45 an hour (national average for both). That's $50 plus benefits, taxes, payroll costs, etc is usually another 50% on top of that. So $90 an hour for just those two people; $45 for your procedure plus 10 minutes on either side in case the procedure runs long or has complications. So let's say $71 for personnel during the procedure. There is a person for the recovery area. Let's say 5 cats for an hour, another $5 for recovery time/settling in recover area on each cat before they don't need constant supervision. Don't forget prepping was another 15 minutes; so another $6 in someone's time. Cleaning up the room after procedure is another $6. We are up to $92 in human time costs.

Equipment and tools to do the procedure are probably about 3% of that. So our total is up to $95 (rounding).

Figure you have probably around a 60% overhead rate that covers the personnel who does all the office admin processes and general office costs. That would be for everything from scheduling appointments, electricity for the office, cleaning, water, rent for the location, etc. That means we are up to $150 (rounding up).

Which means if your procedure is $160 they are making $10 or 6% profit. That sounds reasonable to me. No matter how much a vet like animals they have to make money. If not just to pay their own bills, but to allow them to afford improvements to their offices and keep good staff by offering raises.

I am assuming the higher end includes blood tests, which profit margin on those is low, and medications or a cone, profit on those is higher. You can opt to not get medication at the time of discharge but ask for it on the record so if needed you can get it. You can also get a cone elsewhere usually cheaper. So those costs can be mitigated.
 
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Willowy

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$160 is quite reasonable, in a higher-cost area. My vet charges $120 and this is not a high-cost area. I feel like $300 is getting into too-high territory though, depending on what's included.

Here's a fact: it costs a TON to raise kittens. They eat like horses, they use a lot of litter, and there's just no end to other costs. I figured it out once and I think it came to $50 per kitten to get them to 10 weeks. So even if a spay is fairly expensive, it's still going to save you a lot of money in the long run (just talking about money and not other issues).

However, I also know thats it's hard to want to make that kind of investment in a stray/feral cat. So it's good that there are low-cost clinics in many places.

But still. A cat spay is probably the best value you'll ever get.
 
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Seryy'smom

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Rockets spay was in the $500-600 range. We did all the pretesting and she had a dedicated tech for recovery. Clinic can offer lower costs because they usually have fundraising, volunteers and grants to subsidized them. Private practices have to pay for everything within their fees.

Figure you have your vet and a tech dedicated to your cat for the procedure for 30 minutes. A tech let's say is $15 an hour and your vet is $45 an hour (national average for both). That's $50 plus benefits, taxes, payroll costs, etc is usually another 50% on top of that. So $90 an hour for just those two people; $45 for your procedure plus 10 minutes on either side in case the procedure runs long or has complications. So let's say $71 for personnel during the procedure. There is a person for the recovery area. Let's say 5 cats for an hour, another $5 for recovery time/settling in recover area on each cat before they don't need constant supervision. Don't forget prepping was another 15 minutes; so another $6 in someone's time. Cleaning up the room after procedure is another $6. We are up to $92 in human time costs.

Equipment and tools to do the procedure are probably about 3% of that. So our total is up to $95 (rounding).

Figure you have probably around a 60% overhead rate that covers the personnel who does all the office admin processes and general office costs. That would be for everything from scheduling appointments, electricity for the office, cleaning, water, rent for the location, etc. That means we are up to $150 (rounding up).

Which means if your procedure is $160 they are making $10 or 6% profit. That sounds reasonable to me. No matter how much a vet like animals they have to make money. If not just to pay their own bills, but to allow them to afford improvements to their offices and keep good staff by offering raises.

I am assuming the higher end includes blood tests, which profit margin on those is low, and medications or a cone, profit on those is higher. You can opt to not get medication at the time of discharge but ask for it on the record so if needed you can get it. You can also get a cone elsewhere usually cheaper. So those costs can be mitigated.
WOW,I wouldn't even consider paying that much! I'm on a fixed income.
 

Kieka

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$160 is quite reasonable, in a higher-cost area. My vet charges $120 and this is not a high-cost area. I feel like $300 is getting into too-high territory though, depending on what's included.

Here's a fact: it costs a TON to raise kittens. They eat like horses, they use a lot of litter, and there's just no end to other costs. I figured it out once and I think it came to $50 per kitten to get them to 10 weeks. So even if a spay is fairly expensive, it's still going to save you a lot of money in the long run (just talking about money and not other issues).

However, I also know thats it's hard to want to make that kind of investment in a stray/feral cat. So it's good that there are low-cost clinics in many places.

But still. A cat spay is probably the best value you'll ever get.
My costs on the last two kittens I had was $1,000 on my girl to a year and $650 for my boy to a year old. That is just vet too. The boys neuter was only $50 at the clinic but I had to pay twice for blood testing due to a false positive. Both had a couple appointments in the first year for kitty colds, etc. Vaccines using purevax and regular appointments add up.

Add in food and toys and it was easily $1,500 for the first year. Of course, that is me with a cat only vet and buying the lowest carb kitten food I can find.

Pets aren't cheap. You don't even want to know what it costs to neuter a rabbit.
 

Kieka

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WOW,I wouldn't even consider paying that much! I'm on a fixed income.
I had a cat get spayed in a clinic. Absolute nightmare experience. Horrible scar and something went wrong inside. I ended up paying easily triple that over the next several years dealing with the complications. So with Rocket I decided to find the absolute best in terms of care level regardless of the price. I saved where I could on other things and am blessed to be in a position where I could make it work with my budget (ramen for a while there). Her surgery site was a tiny perfect incision and she healed beautifully. Worth every penny.
 

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We have a fantastic local program that does fund raisers and then distributes $10 spay and neuter vouchers to local vets, first come first serve. I waited for months to get my hands on a voucher, but they just weren't raising enough money at the time to give any out. Reese was getting bigger all the time and I knew it needed to be done. I ended up just scheduling a regular appointment for her at $200.. The next week they were giving out vouchers. :cringe:
 

FelisCatus

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We have a fantastic local program that does fund raisers and then distributes $10 spay and neuter vouchers to local vets, first come first serve. I waited for months to get my hands on a voucher, but they just weren't raising enough money at the time to give any out. Reese was getting bigger all the time and I knew it needed to be done. I ended up just scheduling a regular appointment for her at $200.. The next week they were giving out vouchers. :cringe:
One positive thing that can come out of this is someone who might need it even more than you could get a voucher :)? Just trying to look at the silver lining.... :wink:
 

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One positive thing that can come out of this is someone who might need it even more than you could get a voucher :)? Just trying to look at the silver lining.... :wink:
That's true! I just wanted to save money. Some other kitty might have been in a 'voucher or nothing' situation.
 

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So I called all the local vets for price to spay my new fur baby...…$160-300! It is no wonder so many do not alter their pets at those INSANE prices!

Fortunately the Animal Clinic that my daughter uses only charges $95, so that is where I'm going even though it is an hour away!

So it seems like most doctors, most vets are out to get rich, most certainly not for affordable care! :(
The prices you quote here actually sound like they are on the cheaper side of the spay/neuter price range. When I took my girl in to get spayed 4 years ago I was quoted between $350-$700 depending on what level of care I wanted her to have. The vet presented me with an itemized list that included the base rate for spay and "extras" like pain medication, iv fluids, bloodwork, etc. With these kinds of surgeries quite often you get what you pay for. Cheaper surgeries are riskier and don't include good aftercare like pain management.

Vets run an expensive business and need to be able to make a living like everyone else. People on this site often complain about medical costs when they don't do their homework on the true cost of pet ownership. If you find your local vet expensive I'd suggest getting pet insurance for your cat. The spay/neuter is one of the cheapest medical procedures out there. If anything else happens to your cat guaranteed it is going to be much more expensive than that procedure.
 

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That's true! I just wanted to save money. Some other kitty might have been in a 'voucher or nothing' situation.
Yeah, when I was young my family was really poor and we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

Now I try to help others out by ‘adopting’ cages at my local shelter where the kitty cat inside gets spayed/neutered, vaccines, etc.
 

Willowy

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You don't even want to know what it costs to neuter a rabbit.
The vet I used for my rabbit spay charged $10 more than for a cat (in 2009, $95 for a cat, $105 for a rabbit). Because, he said, it's the same procedure physically but he had to use the "special" anesthetic, which he claimed, at that time, cost $10 more than regular anesthetic for an animal that size. So, because of him, I will forever be suspicious of any vet who charges substantially more for a rabbit spay/neuter than for a cat spay/neuter, lol.
 
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amethyst

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Around here the cost of spays are around $270-300 CAD (about 200-225 USD). That is just the spay not extra testing or anything. So yeah I think that is right around normal. Looking at some old invoices, the biggest cost is the anesthesia, I prefer to go with isoflurane, which is what is used on humans nowadays, it's over $150 alone, but it's safer and has much less side effects then ketamine. I also prefer to have a vet tech and the vet in the room, as well as the cat hooked up to various machines to monitor vitals (heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level, etc), which cheap places don't usually do or even have.

I had a cat go into for a spay at a cheap clinic, and she died during her spay. From the description of what happened it was because she had a bad reaction to the anesthesia (ketamine), she stopped breathing, they got her breathing again and her heart gave out (she wasn't even 2 years old :bawling:). Some of the side effects with ketamine are depressed cardiac function and compromised respiratory function. Yes it's possible she had an underlying condition, but I'll never know, because I went with a cheaper place they didn't check her for anything before the spay. I didn't get a necropsy done either because I couldn't afford it, which is why she was at the cheap vet to begin with.
 

lalagimp

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So, because of him, I will forever be suspicious of any vet who charges substantially more for a rabbit spay/neuter than for a cat spay/neuter, lol.
Guinea pig spays average $230 for me, which is about what they charge for rats too, so I figure the pricing changes once you downsize to 2 lbs and under.
 
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