We're loyal, not just local.

Spring & Calving News

Non Return Rates

General numbers are varying from 75% to 60%.  These are simply cows not seen to return, so they are either truly pregnant / gone anoestrus again / missed heat / or losing the young pregnancy. So where to from here:

- Check that herd numbers on MINDA are reasonably accurate.
- Look in your new season Fertility focus report or MINDApro under 'reports/repro analyses'. It will give a breakdown of NRR for each age group.
- Very high NRR and very low NRR % numbers would be concerning.
- An early preg test of even the 1st week or 2 of mating of only NON-RETURN cows can be hugely helpful in deciding Bull out date/finishing mating date etc. Any non-pregnant cows detected here can get hormonal injections to get them ‘kick-started’ again before mating finishes to avoid some surprise empty cows.

Please keep in touch with us and avoid making uninformed decisions about Bull removal and getting a surprise in January/February.

Post Mortem Service

We are offering a new standardised Post-mortem service for cows, calves and yearlings that will be particularly helpful and important in future when quantifying cow mortality levels and causes for your ‘Fonterra Cooperative difference' data. Please call any of us to discuss logistics, timing and costs.

Mastitis Culturing Updates

Recently there is has been an increased incidence of environmental bugs causing mastitis, the majority being Strep. uberis.

A reminder to ensure that your teat sprayer is working properly and getting good coverage on all four teats at the correct concentration. Here is some kiwi ingenuity that ensures your teat sprayer doesn't get clogged during miking with mud or faeces.

Calf Weighing and Vaccinating Reminders

- Please remember to weigh to the heaviest calf in the mob, and check your drench guns are fully effective.
- Ideal product is Ivermatrix because it is a triple combination drench including Selenium and Cobalt AND SAFE TO DRENCH IN LOWER BODY WEIGHT CALVES.
- Remember Ultravac 7in1 is a 2.5 ML dose so a 500ml pack will do 200 calves!
- Look after your vaccine. Keep it in a chiller bag at your yards and when piercing into a new blister pack keep dirty fingers etc away from the rubber stopper end to minimise bugs getting into your vaccine.
- Change needles regularly.

Don’t forget we have our highly efficient Tech team happy to help or do the calf weighing work for you. Getting these procedures done on time is important.

Tail Scoring

- This is becoming increasingly necessary and requested by farm owners as another measure of animal welfare to be checked annually.
- We have an NZVA endorsed reporting sheet that captures all data.
- Important to at least do early in the season to see how many heifers tail breakages there are. Ideally this should be compared to a pre-calving R2 Heifer tail audit.
- Have you checked your herd? Do you know your damaged tail %. How do you compare to National herd levels?

Please call us to discuss. This is an important area going forward for your herd records.

Some Quick Reminders

Bucket testing of Pivots: Sarah McPhee and her team are booking pivot tests in now, and particularly ahead of upcoming Farm Audits.

‘Red’ drugs on your RVM sheets: Red Drugs are classed as critically important antibiotics or CIA’s and can only be authorised for a 4 month period at any time. They include drugs such as Excede LA / Excenel / Mastalone / Tylan. If you are continuing to use these drugs or have them in your RVM drug cabinets ready for use, you MUST have a current updated RVM. Please check the date on your RVM sheets and if it is more than 4 months since it was last signed off, and you want to use these drugs you need to call us ASAP to discuss ongoing use this season.

Calf Rearer of the Year Awards

This year’s NCVC Calf Rearer of the Year winners are:
Kenmare Dairy – Baylea McDonald as Calf Rearer of the Year - Team 1st place
Red Hill – Reagan Davidson as Calf Rearer of the Year – Individual 2nd place.

We had an outstanding group of calf rearers nominated, who all worked hard to ensure their calves are well looked after. This made it very difficult for our judge Kim Kelly, of MSD, to decide on a winner. A big thanks to MSD for helping to organise and sponsor the event that recognises all of the hard work done by calf rearers in this crucial role, raising the future of their herds. The evening was well received, food was great and lots of support of farm owners/managers of their nominated calf rearers this year.

A quote from our judge, Kim; “If I needed to use a few key phrases to describe the calf rearers we visited it would be attention to detail, hard work, patience and dedication.”

Christmas Best wishes to all. What a year!

As always, any queries just keep in touch with us.

From the Vet and Tech Team - Trish, Alistair, Rob, Ian, Keira, Mara, Sarah W, Alana, Ingrid, Sam, Justin, Julia, Nathan, Brooke, Sarah McP, Hannah and Ben.

We're loyal, not just local.

www.ncvets.co.nz | enquiries@ncvets.co.nz