About the Author | Sotirios Karvountzis qualified in 1994 from the Veterinary School of the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, Greece. With an interest in farm work, for his first posting he took a predominately cattle-based job in Devon, before later working at another practice in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. He set up Mendip Veterinary Services in 2017. Dr Karvountzis' main clinical interests are cattle fertility, genomic benchmarking, reproductive and abdominal surgery, hoof health, mastitis, bull and ram semen testing, pathology and ruminant nutrition. He carries out dynamic and static milk parlour tests with the Vadia Milk Time Testing device and is a Plan Deliverer for the AHDB Dairy Mastitis Control Plan. With extensive experience training vets and farmers, Dr. Karvountzis is a LANTRA Freelance Instructor, City & Guilds NPTC Assessor and CowSignals Master Trainer. He is a tutor of a cattle DIY artificial insemination course, organizes foot trimming courses and holds the Dutch Diploma in Cattle Hoofcare, the NPTC Level 3 Certificate of Competence in Cattle Foot Trimming, White Line Atlas Hoof Trimming Instructor, AHDB Mobility Mentor, RoMS Mobility Scorer and RoMS Approved Trainer. He has trained most of the vets who practice endoscopic surgery in the UK and has tutored endoscopic courses in UK and abroad. He also trains farmers on responsible and safe use of veterinary medicines, prevention of medicine residues in milk, and eradication of diseases, as a MilkSure Champion, BAJVA, BVDFree in England and Wales. Outside the practice, Dr. Karvountzis has been the coordinator of two large scale clinical research projects on caesarean sections and left displacement of abomasum corrective techniques. A computer programmer with an interest in SQL databases, he also developed the cattle data analysis program MilkMonitor (c). |