News & Advice

Fully feeding your cows to improve their milk-producing performance, while simultaneously keeping them healthy, is about maintaining a consistent diet throughout the season.   ‘Consistent’ means feeding them optimum levels of dry matter, energy, protein, fibre, minerals, and vitamins up to their levels of production, but it also involves avoiding sudden changes in the diet composition. […]

The recent outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in Indonesia has raised the profile of this highly contagious viral disease that causes vesicular and erosive lesions of the mouth, nose, teats and feet of all cloven-hoofed animals. It does not kill many adult animals, but the disease is particularly debilitating in cattle and pigs, […]

With an increasing number of cows in New Zealand wearing cow monitoring devices, we have an ever-growing number of animals available for data assessment.   The 24/7 data from cow monitoring devices provides a massive data pool. All this data gives us information for evaluating ways to fine-tune our established farming systems and veterinary advice […]

The transition period, often defined as the period from three weeks before until three weeks after calving, is a challenging time for the health and performance of a dairy cow. Metabolic and reproductive health issues within the transition period are common and can cause a reduction in productivity and increases in costs and losses even […]

Turbo Initial is a dual-active oral drench with the added benefit of prevention against coccidiosis; it is believed that Turbo Initial is the only product globally that has the simultaneous purpose of controlling internal parasites and coccidia at the same time. Turbo Initial also contains cobalt and selenium to assist with trace element supplementation. Turbo […]

Drench resistance is a topic that makes us as vets run the risk of sounding like a broken record or doomsday predictors. Unfortunately, the reality is we are seeing an exponential rise in documented drench resistance year on year. It is not all doom and gloom however as this topic is prompting some great discussions […]

Body condition scoring (BCS) of ewes is an important management tool that assesses the amount of fat and condition of a ewe by feeling the spine and short ribs over her back. Adequate BCS in ewes is important as it relates to: Increases in kilograms of lamb weaned per hectare Increases weaning weight per lamb […]

There are many tried and tested production animal vaccines available, all achieving excellent protection which leads to on-farm profitability. Vaccines can be a significant component of the animal health budget but are invaluable in ensuring good animal health.   It can be hard to measure their value or quantify their effect on production, as the […]

Getting through calving is a little like running a marathon – it can be tough at times, you need to stay mentally strong even when exhausted, and to achieve your best, preparation is key. Firstly, organisation is essential, but this comes more naturally to some people than others. So, for those of you who struggle […]

How well have your bulls come through the season, and how many may you need to replace at upcoming winter bull sales? Bulls should be inspected for their general health and overall physical appearance. Are they lame, has the conformation of their feet deteriorated, or are their claws overgrown? Do their hips appear normal, or […]

The feed requirement of stags during the roar has been less than half that of other times of the year. This is despite the huge energy investment that goes into protecting their patch and herding hinds (or fence pacing) as stags simply do very little eating over this time. Consequently they lose up to 30% […]

Nutrition and management during the transition period are important, but success is set several months in advance. When we speak about a season, we would normally say it starts on 1st August along with calving and it finishes on the 31st May at dry off. But we actually like starting our season on 1st January, […]