15 Sept 2025
Molly Varga-Smith has built a reputation as one of the UK’s leading exotic vets during a career spent working with some weird and wonderful animals. Earlier this year, Molly put that reputation on the line when she left her job to open her own practice, The Exotic Animal Vets, near Manchester…
VBJ
Job Title
Staff: full-time vets 3.5 • registered veterinary nurses 3 • practice administrator 1.6
Fees: initial consult £75 • follow-up £48
When VBJ caught up with Molly Varga-Smith and her husband, former RCVS president Neil, they were taking a well-earned break during another busy day in their new lives as practice owners.
And, since The Exotic Animal Vets opened in a converted Edwardian property in the town of Urmston near Manchester in April, those lives have been extremely busy indeed.
Molly left her role as head of the exotics service at Rutland House Referrals four months ago to set up her own business and she freely admits the experience has at times been “overwhelming”.
But with her husband by her side, Molly has overcome the many challenges that have come her way and seems to have navigated the transition from paid employee to running her own practice remarkably well. Despite having only been open for four months, The Exotic Animal Vets is already teeming with life, with more than 700 registered clients and almost 1,300 animals of all shapes and sizes under the practice’s care.
It helps that many of Molly’s clients have followed her from Rutland House following an agreement with senior leadership at VetPartners, which has owned Rutland House since 2018.
But even if that had not been the case, it is likely the practice would have succeeded regardless. Having worked in the field of exotics for decades, Molly has been a regular on the lecture circuit and has also been widely published, while her reputation among exotic pet owners is such that when she opened her own practice, it was as close to it gets to a sure thing.
Not that it hasn’t been a lot of work, especially with the pace at which developments unfolded, as Molly explained. “We decided in the autumn of 2024 that this is what we wanted to do. Within a few weeks we’d located premises and paid the deposit,” she said.
“But it’s been a lot of work, especially as we opened only 11 weeks after getting the keys to the building, and there have been times where it has been overwhelming. Not the clinical stuff, but some of the other things that need to be done starting a business, but Neil has been a massive help with that.”
The business was opened in Neil’s name in order to reduce any potential conflicts with Molly still being a Rutland House employee until three days before they opened.
After finding a suitable property which had been recently refurbished following its previous life as a doctor’s surgery, the couple collected the keys on 3 February this year and 11 weeks later The Exotic Animal Vets opened its doors for the first time.
Neil said: “One of the things we both wanted was for the practice to be within walking distance from our house and this place was perfect.
“The building had been a doctor’s practice for a long time, probably since it was built and it sort of expanded from being a house and a practice into being just a practice.
“The landlord had spent a lot of time and money refurbishing it. And so, we came into a building that had new floors, newly plastered walls, new lighting, new electricity, new plumbing, comprehensive fire alarm system, a burglar alarm system – but it was what they would call a white box, so we needed to get the builders in to create exactly what we wanted.”
The pair used local trades to complete the work, which has seen the three-storey building transformed into a 3,800sq ft veterinary practice capable of dealing with “anything that will fit through the door” as Molly describes it.
Reception is on the ground floor, along with an accessible bathroom, three large and well-lit consult rooms and a pharmacy. On the first floor is the prep room, surgical theatre, staff room and separate kennelling areas for herbivore and prey animals, and a vivarium room for reptiles and carnivores. Accommodation for students and staff is located on the top floor.
While there is a limited amount of on-site parking behind the practice, clients are allowed to park in the shopping centre opposite, which provides three hours’ free parking.
When it came to staff, Molly was fortunate as she was able to start the new venture with clinicians she knows well.
RVN Craig Tessyman is a leading light in the world of exotics nursing and someone Molly had worked with for almost a decade, while RVN Debbie Huxley, who serves as practice manager, front of house reception and on-site SQP, is another long-term colleague.
The team has since grown rapidly with the addition of vet Charlie Roper, along with regular locum Villy Vagdatli.
RVN Liv Cook has recently joined the team while Sherly Calway, who has a PGC(EAS), will be joining the vet team in the next few weeks. Another imminent addition is Anna Mercer, an RVN known as Anna the Ferret Vet Nurse, who is set to join the practice in October.
It is a highly skilled team worth shouting about and Neil has clearly enjoyed developing the marketing and social media side of things, having set-up a Facebook page early that now has more than 1,600 followers.
Neil said: “Molly wasn’t allowed to say where she was going or advertise it in advance, but the company is actually set up in my name, so any decisions about the business and advertising is all on me.
“So, when we were approached by a bus company in the St Helens area, we paid for an advert with Molly’s picture on the side of two of their buses that operate in the Warrington and St Helens area.
“I am not sure what the ROI is going to be on that, but it’s certainly a bit of fun and it’s getting our name out there. We’ve even run a Facebook post getting followers to send pictures of the buses when they see them.”
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Originally, the plan had to been for the team at The Exotic Animal Vets to provide their own out-of-hours service; however, the relatively low number of out-of-hours cases so far has meant this service is currently provided by another local practice.
Molly said: “The 24-hour care is done by a local 24/7 provider called Pet-Medics – they approached us because they were interested in increasing their first opinion exotics caseload and they are not really a competitor to us. We really work collaboratively, and I’m available to give them advice.
“Originally, we were planning to do our own out of hours and actually try to become the Greater Manchester exotics out-of-hours hub – I am so glad we didn’t do that now.
“I think probably only about 10 clients have used the out-of-hours service since we opened so it just doesn’t make economic sense. We also use VidiVet, which gives us peace of mind that clients can get free (to them) advice 24/7.”
The VidiVet team has received extra training from Molly and the service provides clients with 24-hour access to a vet and an online booking system to book a next day appointment if that is required and the case is not an immediate emergency.
This means the practice, which is RWAF Rabbit Friendly accredited, can offer its team a good work-life balance with no weekend or out of hours work, although there are plans to increase opening times shortly as demand is growing.
Molly and her team are all either specialists or certificate holders and while the main focus is on referral work, there is a growing demand for first opinion, too.
“I think exotics is very hard to make pay just doing referrals,” said Molly.
“You need to get the churn going, and you need to support those other animals in the area, and we try and support local vets to deal with them, and we’re comfortable with mutual clients So, it’s not a question of trying to poach people. We’ve had a lot of support from local practices and are happy to work collaboratively.
“And really there is no limit on what we will see, as long as it fits through the door. The smallest, we have had is a 2g frog, we’ve just seen a 4g Gecko and a 25kg tortoise, so we have been kept busy.”
One of the big challenges when it comes to an exotics-only practice is that the number of insured clients is relatively low.
The practice has a decent number of insured rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas and the odd insured reptile, but Molly estimates around 80% of patients have no cover.
So the team always needs a “plan A, B and C” to cater to the wildly varying budgets of the exotic pet owner demographic.
That is not to say that the best care is not on offer and the practice boasts some seriously impressive kit to facilitate even the most advanced treatments. A BMI x-ray machine (BMX-AR30) and a SonoScope ProPet 70 ultrasound machine are both getting plenty of use while Molly hopes to have CT on site soon.
There are also plans to help develop the next generation of exotic vets and specialists. The practice is already welcoming students, and indeed is booked out for placements until 2027, while Molly hopes to be able to offer internships in the near future, too.
She said: “The practice is already doing well, and we are above our projections financially, so hopefully that will all take care of itself and we can concentrate on creating a practice where everyone enjoys being at work.
“We try to look after the team as best we can and offer good salaries and also a good pension contribution as well, and that just feels like the right thing to do.
“I also want to look towards potentially having interns, so junior members of the profession that we can help develop. That is the plan for the future, the practice can continue to grow and we can hopefully help to develop the next generation of exotics specialists.”
