A veterinary care service for livestock has covered all prefecture-level areas in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China's major prairie area.

Headquartered in Xilingol Grasslands, the largest veterinary care facility in the region boasts operating rooms, rehabilitation rooms, a pharmacy and a lab equipped with microscopes, blood cell analyzers and micronutrient analyzers.

The government-sponsored animal hospital built in June also has a telemedicine system to provide remote-diagnosing services to assist 63 subsidiary branches and a team of more than 100 veterinarians in every prefecture-level area in Inner Mongolia.

The medical service for livestock now has the capacity to provide medical service to treat 1.5 million sheep and 200,000 cattle.

Odenchogte, a veterinarian in the hospital, recently performed surgery to remove necrotic tissues on a cattle.

"The cattle was hit on its abdomen in a fight, and was left without treatment for a month," said Odenchogte.

The cattle is undergoing postoperative recovery in the hospital.

Its owner, herder Bayar, said the treatment fee cost him 500 yuan (76 U.S. dollars). But considering the cattle's value of 18,000 yuan, he decided it was worth it.

"Herders used to dismiss minor illnesses and injuries of their livestock. A lot of livestock die because of delayed treatment. Now with the convenient livestock medical service, more and more herders have become aware of treating the small problems to save losses," said the vet.

Bilgee, another vet with the hospital, just treated a lame pony. He said he used acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Mongolian medicine to treat its neurological disease.

The pony was able to walk freely after 10 days of therapy.

"We keep all medical records on file, and pay regular return visits until the 'patients' fully recover," said Bilgee.

Having been in the profession for nearly 20 years, Bilgee said that in the past, vets only dealt with livestock during difficult births, but they now see more cases of dyspepsia and malnutrition.

Xilingol, boasting 18,333 hectares of grassland, is one of four major pastoral regions in Inner Mongolia.

"With the medical service for livestock, there are fewer risks for herders to expand the stock of cattle and sheep," said Otgeenbayaar, a local herder.

He said that the veterinarians can perform remote diagnostics or pay on-call visits to the pasture.

"They are just one call away, and they have treated scores of livestock and reduced our losses," he said.

Aside from livestock, the hospital also performed leg surgery on an injured lamb sent from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to fix a fracture.