Community votes wanted for pet health lab

Kerrie Kavanagh and some of the Pet Vet Lab team:  Mia Supple, Claire Nangle, Brian Kelly, Katie O'Neill, Tim Lacey and Niamh Slattery.

A laboratory dedicated to assessing pet health and headed up by a Kilcullen resident is in the final shakeup for the Irish Made Awards 2024 run by Irish Country Magazine, writes Brian Byrne.

Kerrie Kavanagh is the senior microbiologist at Pet Vet Lab, which operates within the Irish Equine Centre campus at Johnstown, and she would really appreciate support from the community in the voting. The laboratory is a finalist in the Petmania category of the awards, and public voting at irishcountrymagazine.ie/vote24/ is open until 12 September.

Kerrie lives in Cnoc na Greine and leads a team of ten scientists at Pet Vet Lab, which produces probiotics for pets, individualised to maximise each animal's health. Based on establishing gut health through analysis of fecal matter from the pet, the technique was developed for the multi-million-euro Irish horse industry. "To their owners, pets are part of their families, to whom they are just as high a value as horses are," Kerrie says, noting the fact that she and all her team are all dog owners. Though the service is not confined to dogs — cats, pet birds, even alpacas have been helped with the techniques provided at Pet Vet Lab.

"When we get in a fecal sample from, say, a dog that has been showing symptoms — maybe digestive or skin issues or behavioural problems — we can determine if there's an imbalance in the gut health that might be causing it. Then we target specific bacteria from the animal that would help fix that, providing it as a probiotic solution."

Pet Vet Lab does considerable work for veterinary practices and for animal shelter charities, but also encourages pet owners to access them directly where appropriate. It's more than probable that there are many pets out there whose general health is not as well as it might be simply because their owners don't know that they can be checked out in a simple way. “We always emphasise that issues which require veterinary services should be done through your vet, but for general health analysis we have a samples service available through our website.” The site at petvetlab.ie provides very clear instructions for contact and sending in samples.

For any pet owner who'd like to talk directly to Kerrie and her team, they'll be at Maxi Zoo in The Globe Retail Park in Naas this Saturday 7 September from 12 noon to 4pm, providing information and free worm test kits.

Meantime, particularly if you are a Kilcullen pet owner, get that vote in.

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