News & Advice

Congratualtions to Jack and Clare Wild from Saint Bathans and Geordie Hill Station in Tarras for winning our giveaway in conjunction with Royal Canin. We hope your dogs are feeling the benefit of being on Royal Canin 4800 Energy and that you can put the $1000 worth of clinic credits to good use! Are your […]

Vetlife is currently undertaking a deer copper survey amongst our clients, via liver biopsies on farms, to gain an understanding of how well their deer are emerging from winter. The preliminary results are interesting with a wide range of results being reported. 36% of groups tested (ten) are in the deficient range (less than 100 […]

Vetlife Scientific has recently published the results of a trial set up to investigate whether individual animals affected by worms could be identified through changes in the animals’ behaviour. The research, published in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal, tracked the behaviour of 36 five- to six-month-old Friesian-Jersey heifer calves over nine weeks using animal-mounted, accelerometer-based […]

Depending on where you are nuisance flies can be a real pain on farms over the summer and autumn months. The offending fly is Stomoxys calcitrans – also known as the stable fly. It is similar in appearance and size to the common house fly, but has mouthparts adapted to pierce through skin so it […]

There is nothing much more soul-wrenching than witnessing the rapid decline of a previously high-producing dairy cow, invariably in her prime, withering away to a skeleton fit only for the pet food truck. Johne’s disease is a scourge in the cattle industry worldwide and it is a major cause of wastage for our NZ dairy […]

In the world of dairy farming, ensuring the reproductive success of your herd is crucial for maximising productivity and profitability. One of the most critical periods in this process is the pre-mating phase, during which cows exhibit heat signs. Understanding these signs and leveraging new technologies, such as wearable collars, can significantly enhance your herd’s […]

Talking about reducing emissions and improving efficiency can be a delicate, if not an emotive, topic. Yet you should be congratulating yourself on just how far you have come. It was not too many years ago that mating lasted a consistent 16 weeks, with a large tranche of cows being induced to calve prematurely that […]

Reports of triple drench resistance are becoming far more commonplace in dairy heifers across NZ. To prevent this on our farms we need to be looking towards more sustainable use of drench going forward. A great starting point here is doing faecal egg count monitoring. Worm eggs in the faeces of cattle can give us […]

A lot is asked of calves after they are born and, in many ways, the odds are stacked against them. They are born without a functional immune system which still has four to six weeks to fully develop on them. Instead, they are reliant on the passive transfer of antibodies across their intestine from their […]

Cow wearables are no longer a novelty on New Zealand dairy cows. With over two years of collar analysis under our belt, I thought it appropriate to share a snippet of findings and trends we have picked up while working with client data. ‘Days the First Heat’ vary between farms (and first calvers always take […]

This is a summary of a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2024 by Vetlife Scientific on behalf of the Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) Background Following concerns from deer farmers about a novel severe form of lameness in adult stags[1] a national cross-sectional survey was developed by the authors of this study to estimate the prevalence […]

Vetlife production animal veterinarian Amy Avery has been practicing with Vetlife for over 13 years, the last eight of which have been at Vetlife Temuka. Amy has an active interest in calf rearing and herd health and is a keen proponent of our ‘Future Cow’ programme. Amy chose to specialise in farm animals after graduation […]