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Clostridial and B12 vaccinations

Put your hand up if, every year in late summer, you have a beautiful mob of lambs ready to go to the works, then you find one or more suddenly dead in the paddock a few days before the truck comes? This tends to be relatively common on sheep farms, and also in some beef mobs too. This sudden death syndrome in fat, fast growing lambs is usually due to a clostridial bacteria causing Pulpy Kidney. It can also occur when lambs are on a high-octane summer crop. What can be done to prevent these death...

FEC drench check

“The objective of worm management is to minimize the impact of worms on animal performance while minimizing the selection for drench resistance” Beef & Lamb NZ 2013 Youngstock is the major contributor to worm populations in the paddocks. Any animals under 9 months old are highly susceptible to worms and so the traditional approach to drenching in many Southland farms has been to drench lambs at weaning time, right through until winter with a monthly drench. Going back to the objective of wo...

Fly Blow in the south: Prevalence, prevention and treatment

Flystrike is the most important external parasite of sheep in New Zealand, and yes, it's definitely in Southland. There are three species of blowflies that can initiate flystrike in sheep and two species that are secondary invaders. When and how does this happen? The main flystrike challenge period is November through to March. Adult flies and larvae, which have overwintered, become active and start to hatch once the soil temperature exceeds 12 degrees. Once you start seeing flies in your house ...

Growing great lambs

Today the sun is shining and I feel like I can hear the grass growing, so hopefully, a few more days like this and your lambs will be thriving. Lamb growth is influenced by feed, animal health, genetics, weather, and ewe condition/health. While the weather is out of your control, there are things you can do to manage lamb health. As we approach weaning, the risk factors for trace element deficiencies, some diseases, and stress increase. Lambs that grow faster will reach slaughter weights sooner,...

Quarantine drenching rams

Remembering to quarantine drench rams when they come on farm can be the biggest advantage to avoiding drench resistance. Creating worms resistant to drench takes time and we know there are lots of things we can do to slow it down as much as possible. In fact, the most likely way for drench resistance to fast track on your farm is to inadvertently buy it in. Any livestock brought on to your farm can be carrying problems you have been working to avoid. While store lambs and replacement hoggets ar...

Ram Run

With Summer just around the corner and mating following soon after, in February you will find many of our vets behind large numbers of rams having a good feel of their testicles. So why are we doing this? Ram testicles are not all the same, and they don’t all work from one year to the next. Ram palpations are a much more reliable way of predicting the likely fertility of your ram than a single semen sample. If your rams, and their testicles, are not in tip-top condition, you can be left with a...

Deworming horses

What are faecal egg counts and why do we do them? A faecal egg count (FEC) is an easy way to determine whether a horse needs to be drenched or not. It gives a reflection of a possible parasite burden and can sometimes give insight into which parasites your horse has. Vets use a FEC to give horse owners a recommendation on drenching and sometimes will also use it to give recommendations on which product to use. A FEC can also be used to see how effective the last drench was by testing a sample 1...

Submission rate

Now we are in the second half of November most dairy farms in the South your first 3 weeks of mating will be about done. For the most part, the arrival of better weather and improving cow condition has reduced the number of non-cyclers. This is great for two reasons. The most obvious is lower animal health costs, but even better than that is the cows we are treating we should see even better conception rates and so even higher return on the investment. To be on track for a successful mating the ...

Breeding beef

What options do you have with your beef breeding this year? Are you looking at using special genetics in your cows? Does having a condensed calving period have an advantage on your farm? There are a number of different options if you are keen to manage your beef breeding season differently this year. Artificial Insemination (AI) is an option in beef systems to bring in new genetics - without the cost of purchasing specialty bulls. We can prepare your cattle so that the AI can be done in one day....

BVD screening

Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) is a widespread viral disease which costs New Zealand agriculture (Beef and Dairy) $150 million in lost production, decreased reproduction and animal losses each year. It has been reported to cause an average of 5% decrease in pregnancy rate on affected farms. This is due to early embryonic deaths, mummified foetuses, abortions and reduced bull fertility. In calves the disease can cause scouring, poor growth, coughing, ulcers in the mouth, and lameness. Now is the id...

Calf rearing tips and tricks

At our ‘Wean Soirée’ events in Gore and Winton last year, some of our local calf rearers shared some of their challenges and key learnings. While many are out of their control - such as the weather - they shared a great list of things they do. The discussions, bubbles and food was great and an interesting challenge was the interference of fathers/husbands and grandfathers! The biggest takeaway tips and tricks suggested by the calf rearers were: Weak Calves Get poorly calves on electrolytes ...

Do you want improved conception rates?

Improved conception rates for non-cycler programmes with additional prostaglandin. Dairy cows that have not shown a heat prior to the planned start of mating have improved reproductive results when treated with a 10 day program involving progesterone (CIDR), GnRH, prostaglandin (PG) and eCG. This programme has formed the basis of our non-cycler treatment program since the ban of oestradiol benzoate in dairy cows in 2007. We have been achieving good conception rates to this program with an averag...

Get your info on track – make it easier and more accurate with Infovet!

Over 60% of our clients have signed up to Infovet, to realise the benefit of getting better data and easier for their herd health management. Infovet is an innovative software programme developed here in New Zealand to improve farm performance. By using Infovet (with you granting permission) we can provide you with a wealth of data, allowing accurate insights into herd health to drive farm profitability. The efficient nature of the system reduces the need for time consuming paperwork. Infovet as...

Maximising velvet growth

It’s well known that good nutrition is essential for maximum velvet growth. While this usually refers to energy and particularly protein, it’s important to also remember the role of trace elements in setting stags up to produce good velvet yields. For velvet production there are three trace elements that are thought to be most important – copper, zinc and manganese. Copper and zinc are the trace elements known to be critical for cell replication, and given that this is occurring more quick...

Pre-mating checklist

Get your mob ready for mating with this handy checklist. Use this handy checklist to make sure you don’t miss anything this season....

Pre-mating heat detection with tail paint

If you don’t want to deal with a prolonged mating period resulting in less milk next season, nor with ongoing non-cycling and mating costs, you need to get all of your cows in-calf early. Aim for these reproduction targets: A good conception rate of 55-60%A 3-week submission rate of around 90% Achieving these targets will put you on the right track to achieving the target 6 week in-calf rate of 78%. It can be difficult to directly change your conception rate, as many of the factors that affect...

Repro round up

Like many events this year, unfortunately due to the “C” word, we had to cancel our annual Repro Round up and Winter seminar night. For many, this is an event to mainly get off farm and have some good laughs with neighbours and friendly vet. Although we can’t get that much needed catch up back, we can still give you a summary of the repro performance from the 2019-20 season. As seen in the graphs below, it was a mixed bag of results for the season. For an average across all of the VetSouth...

The ins and outs of 'Dirty Cows'

What is metrichecking? Metrichecking is the examination of the vaginal discharge in a cow that has calved over 14 days ago, which looks for evidence of infection or slowed healing after calving. Why should you metricheck your herd? Cows have only a small window of time to recover fully from calving before they hit peak milking levels and the mating season. Infections after calving cause a delay in cycling and will also reduce conception rates. Sometimes the infection can spread deeper into the t...

Where do you want to be this repro season?

We all know the value of a successful repro season, where you can increase your in-calf rate, condense the calving period and get the production targets you want. So we have things to think about, and some targets you can consider - to discuss your farm situation call your KeyVet to discuss. How many metabolic/down cows? <3% Hopefully less than 3% needed treated - mark them and plan to support them through reproduction. If you have more than this call your vet to discuss a potential plan. ...

Advantages of condensing your calving

Most farms try to achieve a condensed calving period, with the majority of the herd calving within a 4-week period and the whole herd within 8-weeks. How compact your calving pattern is will determine or have an impact on: Number of days in milk (lactation days) and therefore productionNumber of replacements bred and the rate of genetic gain within a herdNumber of empties that affects your ability to cull within the herdManagement practices regarding both labour requirements and feed managementY...

Yersiniosis in deer

Yersiniosis, a highly infectious disease, is characterised by a bloody scour in deer fawns which rapidly leads to death if untreated. Early clinical signs of the disease in deer include a green, watery, smelly diarrhoea which soon becomes bloody. What causes Yersiniosis? Yersiniosis is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pseudotuberculosis which can be carried by wildlife (birds, rodents, rabbits and hares) as well as domestic animals (cattle, sheep, pigs and goats).Carrier animals usually rem...

Lepto on deer farms

Leptospirosis is the disease caused by a bacteria, Leptospira interrogans to be precise, which has different strains with different effects on deer. The most widespread strain is Hardjo-bovis, but also Pomona and occasionally Copenhageni has been reported in farmed deer in New Zealand. Leptospirosis is known in different species, including humans, where it can lead to flu-like symptoms, which can progress to serious sickness if left untreated. The bacteria is, depending on the strain, carried by...

Did you get your winter dental?

The last couple of months we have been running our annual Winter Dental Special, which was again a great success. Before starting our dental exam we often ask if your horse is showing any signs of dental pain; like quidding, head tossing, having trouble eating or being more difficult to ride with a bit on one side. The most important thing we have to realise though is that a lot of horses don’t show signs of dental pain! Being a prey animal, it is essential that you don’t stop eating to be a...

Off label use of medications and supplements

Over the last few years, we have seen sporadic cases of horses reacting to drugs being administered that were intended for use in other species. This has included severe (potentially life) threatening myositis reactions resulting from administration of injectable vitamin and mineral supplementations, (B12 and selenium injection), skin reactions from off label use of cattle pour-ons and abscesses developing on the neck from contaminated medication that had been stored incorrectly in a dairy shed....

Puncture wounds in the foot

You are heading out to check your horse in his paddock on a sunny Sunday afternoon. You notice that he is now severely lame on one limb and is standing with his toe pointed. You lift the leg to assess his foot and see a nail protruding from the sole of his hoof! Solar punctures should always be treated as potential emergencies - we are particularly concerned about penetrating injuries to this area as the foot and lower limb contain many sensitive and vital structures. Damage or infection in thes...