Nick Butcher meeting Princess Anne during his time working as a vet in Jersey.

How A Teenage James Herriot Moved From Clinic To Boardroom

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6th March, 2026 11h17

Vet surgeon Nick Butcher, owner of Animus Surgical and founder of charitable trust The Quadstar Foundation, charts his journey from the fields of his youth to building multiple businesses

There is a moment when speaking to Nick Butcher which encapsulates both his character and his mission. 

He is describing a phone call he received recently from one of the young people supported by his Quadstar Foundation. It was not a call about academic pressure or career strategy. The student’s car had broken down and he did not know what to do. 

“A lot of them don’t have that parental support,” says Nick, quietly. “He just didn’t know who to call.” 

That the founder of a veterinary group, the owner of a medical device company and a man who once looked after racehorses for Saudi Arabian royalty should find himself fielding calls about broken-down cars tells you almost everything you need to know about the through-line of his career. 

It is a journey that has taken him from the farmyards of his childhood to the boardrooms of corporate veterinary medicine – and from there to a life built squarely on the principle that shaped his own success: the harder you work, the luckier you become. 

There was no medical or farming history in the Butcher family but young Nick lived next to a farm and from the age of around 10 he was simply there, helping out, making what he cheerfully admits was “more of a nuisance than anything”. 

“I’m not particularly bright,” he says, with a matter-of-factness that becomes a refrain, with university “quite tough. A lot of slog.” 

His early career was peripatetic: equine work in Winchester, a year at Newmarket with the renowned vet Peter Rossdale, then a serendipitous move to Jersey after a family trip to sort out a late aunt’s affairs. “I introduced myself to a practice over there, said if you’ve ever got a job… a few months later they had one.” 

Life in beautiful Jersey, he says, was formative. A small island with a vast social spectrum, “you dealt with every single client, from farmer to millionaire to students. In England, if you’re in a particular area, your clients could be mainly miners or stockbrokers. Here, you got the complete spectrum.” It was, he says simply, “great fun”. 

There followed a six-month sojourn in Riyadh, looking after Prince Faisal bin Khalid’s racehorses. 

“An interesting life experience,” he offers, diplomatically. “Culturally, it was quite a shock. There wasn’t actually that much work to do.” 

He returned, enjoyed a summer working in Guernsey, and eventually landed in Wokingham working with a vet named Tim Davies. 

Nick and Tim became business partners and bought the practice, growing the team in the process. However, the motivation for that growth was not what you might expect.

“I’ve never really been driven by money,” says Nick. “I like increasing turnover because it’s an easy target to gauge. But that’s not what drove me.” 

What drove him on his journey to expansion was actually the constant night shifts.   

“In those days, there were no night clinics. It was all on a rota,” said Nick. “We were one-in-four, and we thought: if we get to eight vets, we can drop out of the rota. That was absolutely the driver.” 

He laughs. It is a profoundly relatable origin story for any veterinary surgeon who has ever stared down the barrel of a 3am emergency call-out. 

Then, after amicably going their separate ways having forged a strong working relationship, Nick founded Active Vetcare Group (AVC). Having been bitten by the growth bug, he ended his time with AVC having 130 staff across 17 sites, including two veterinary hospitals. 

In 2007, he sold Active Vetcare to corporate group CVS. Then, in 2010, he bought Animus Surgical. He describes himself as “a non-exploitative opportunist”. He spots openings, he works hard and he acts.

ANIMUS SURGICAL

Animus Surgical is perhaps the least visible chapter of Nick’s career to the average practitioner, yet it is central to his present and his future. 

The company produces, among many other things, the innovative SkinBond Multi, a skin adhesive conveniently packaged in 10 x single-use pipettes. 

“From my years in both small animal and equine practice, I understand the need for a fuss-free solution for those final touches in surgery and minor wounds,” said Nick. 

“SkinBond Multi is designed for precisely this. The single-use pipettes offer unparalleled convenience whilst eliminating cross-contamination risk and reducing waste.” 

Animus is, on the face of it, a medical device business. However, to Nick, it is also something else entirely. “The drive to keep Animus going and growing is to help fund our Quadstar mission,” he said. 

In 2016, he founded the Quadstar Foundation. Its mission, distilled, is to find talented young people from challenging and disadvantaged backgrounds and offer them not just financial support, but “unlimited mentoring and pastoral support”. 

He initially worked with United World Schools (UWS), building schools in Cambodia, Nepal and Myanmar. “The UWS is a brilliant charity, doing some really amazing work,” he says. 

However, with a strong desire to provide tangible mentorship, he felt the distance of his work with UWS keenly. “There was no personal contact,” he said. “I wanted to offer support and mentoring, and unfortunately I just couldn’t do that with students out there.” 

So, he brought the mission home. 

“Our students are all from challenging postcode areas and home life,” Nick explains. “Often single-parent families. Often neglected in terms of encouragement. They might have to share a laptop with three siblings. To get them out of that difficult home life to board for two years of sixth form gives them a genuinely lifechanging boost.” 

The foundation’s website states support is “not determined by top grades”. Instead, it looks for “talent, ambition and resilience”.  

This is a deliberate choice. Nick’s own, incredibly modest, self-assessment of “I’m not particularly bright”, clearly informs it. He knows potential is not always neatly packaged with A-star grades. 

“We organise annual events. We keep in touch and really try to encourage them to help each other. We’ve created quite a tight-knit family.” 

He and his wife Michelle both mentor. The students know they can call about anything. A car. A relationship. University applications. 

“To see how they develop and grow, the majority have improved and taken a different path in life. Some of them are just absolutely incredible, how they’ve transformed,” said Nick. 

This is where Animus enters the story, not as a separate venture, but as the engine room of the foundation. 

Nick has long since pledged 15 per cent of Animus Surgical’s profits directly to Quadstar. It is an unusual and striking commitment for a medical device company, and one that reframes its commercial success as a charitable deliverable. 

“I hope it will be a potential legacy for my kids to grow as well,” he says. 

He has four children, Michelle has one. They travel widely together and he would be “delighted” if any of them wanted to become involved in either Animus or Quadstar in due course. But that is for the future. 

On the future, does the concept of retirement feature in his thinking? 

“I don’t seem to be slowing down really,” he admits with a chuckle. “I keep saying: this year I’ll slow down, this year I’ll slow down but it never quite happens.” 

The truth is that engine is still running. Animus needs to grow. Quadstar needs to continue its valuable, lifechanging work. The students need their mentors. And somewhere, a young person from a difficult home is looking at a broken-down car, wondering who to call to get the engine restarted. 

You can find out more about Animus Surgical by visiting https://animussurgical.com/, while for more information on the Quadstar Foundation, visit https://quadstar.org/. 

NICK BUTCHER CV

1978-1983 Royal Dick School, Edinburgh, spent summer 1982 working in Equine practice in Harare, Zimbabwe 
1983 - first job in SA/Eq practice in Winchester moving then to Rossdales in Newmarket working directly alongside Dr Peter Rossdale OBE, FRCVS one of the ‘great’ equine vets 
1984 - 1989 St Davids Place Vet Hospital in Jersey - SA and Eq. Radio Jersey vet, Jersey Race Club vet 
1989 - private equine vet to Prince Faisal bin Khalid, leading racehorse owner in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 
1989 - locum vet in Guernsey 
1990 - joined Tim Davies at Nine Mile Veterinary Hospital, Wokingham and formed partnership in Veterinary Healthcare Group 
1990 - 1999 grew VHG to 5 surgeries in Berkshire 
1998 - VHG split and TD and NB went separate ways. NB formed Active Vetcare Group 
1998- 2007 grew AVC to 16 surgeries, 130 staff including two vet hospitals based in Thames Valley and North Staffordshire
2007 - sold AVC to CVS. Retained vet properties and formed Vetprop as a vet property investment company 
2015 - purchased Animus Surgical
2017 - founded The Quadstar Foundation

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