Eltham Vet
Eltham Vet Services is a 13-vet practice that has served the farms and family pets of Central and South Taranaki with distinction since 1937. For your pet’s healthcare & your peace of mind contact or visit us.
As we come to the end of another busy and rewarding year, the team at Eltham Vet Services would like to extend a big thank you to all our farmers and clients for your continued support. Your trust in us—whether for day-to-day animal health needs, herd and flock planning, emergency callouts, or simply a yarn over the gate—means a great deal. We’re proud to work alongside such a dedicated and resilient farming community.
It’s been encouraging to see some strong grass growth around much of the district recently and with it, decent production and reproduction figures. After the mixed weather patterns earlier in the season, the lift in quality feed has been a welcome sight. Here’s hoping the trend continues and we see steady growth over the summer.
One of the real highlights for us this year has been seeing more of our farmer members attending our information nights, workshops, and social events. The turnout at these gatherings has been incredibly positive. Your willingness to show up, ask questions and share experiences is what makes these events worthwhile. We’re committed to building on this momentum and will be offering even more opportunities next year for farmers to connect, learn, and get the most out of the services we provide.
To thank all our clients for keeping us in work over the past 12 months, we have our Farmers BBQ on Wednesday 17th December and our Christmas ‘turkey’ giveaway. Once again we have a bacon and chocolate option available as well and both will be on a first in basis while stocks last. So if you qualify for our Christmas giveaway (you will be notified by text) get in early to secure your Christmas day lunch on us. We wish you and your families a safe, productive, and enjoyable summer, and we look forward to working with you throughout 2026.
— The Team at Eltham Vet Services
Introducing: Nutrition Vet Taranaki - Current animal health and ruminant nutrition insights from Eltham Vets
We’re excited to launch a new regular feature on our Facebook page — Nutrition Vet, where we’ll share up-to-date insights into animal health, ruminant nutrition, and practical feeding strategies for your herd.
This follows our vet Holly’s achievement in gaining Membership in Ruminant Nutrition through the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists (ANZCVS). This qualification recognises her advanced knowledge in all aspects of ruminant nutrition — from the science of feed and digestion to applying nutritional principles that optimise animal health, milk production, and overall farm performance.
Holly is also a member of the New Zealand Association of Ruminant Nutritionists (mNZARN), keeping her connected with the latest research, industry developments, and a network of ruminant nutrition experts nationwide.
We welcome topic requests and open discussion — if there’s something you’d like us to cover in Nutrition Vet, let us know.
Coming into summer it is our riskiest period of the year for the spread of preventable diseases for working dogs and pets. We have just completed our working dog vaccine run. If you have missed out give us a bell to book yours in. Annual vaccination is very important to prevent diseases such as parvovirus, leptospirosis, and kennel cough. Parvo especially likes to run rampant during the hotter months, and hits pups especially hard with symptoms including diarrhoea, vomiting, and can result in death in severe cases.
When your dog is getting their annual vaccination, consider covering their flea protection for the whole year with our new product Bravecto Quantum – an injectable flea product that lasts for 12 months. Speak to your vet or one of our friendly receptionists to book in!
ADDITIONAL VACCINES
See table of up coming suggested vaccination schedule for calves
Please contact your vet to discuss calf vaccinations if you have any questions.
Vitamin B1 or thiamine deficiency causes a disease known as polioencephalomalacia (‘polio’). In New Zealand this is most commonly seen in youngstock over the summer months, when calves are around 6-12 months old.
How?
Cattle rely on bacteria in their rumen to produce vitamin B1 daily. If factors upset these bacteria it can lead to either less Thiamine being produced or an increase in enzymes that destroy the thiamine already present in the rumen. Lack of vitamin B1 leads to inflammation in the brain and causes brain cells to die. Due to this reliance on rumen health and production, in New Zealand the most common time we see B1 deficiency is after moving cattle from rough pasture to a lush new paddock.
What?
Typically we see B1 deficiency as:
● Early signs: not eating
● Nervous signs: staggering, apparent blindness, muscle tremors, depression, head pressing
● Can progress to recumbency and death if not treated
● Often only 1 to a few calves affected at any given time
● Signs progress quickly, over 6-12 hours so it is important these cases are noticed and treated promptly.
● These clinical signs are not specific to thiamine deficiency and can also be caused by lead or salt poisoning, listeria, and other infectious diseases.
Treatment?
If any of these clinical signs are noticed then please give the clinic a phone to discuss possible diagnoses and a treatment plan. Treatment is best given ASAP to avoid irreversible damage to the brain.
● B1 injection, into the muscle for at least 3 days
● Often an anti-inflammatory is given too
Prevention?
● Avoid sudden feed changes e.g. going from stalky summer pasture to fast fermentable lush pasture. Try and transition them slowly where possible.
● Monitor cattle, especially youngstock after moving them onto a fresh paddock.
Facial eczema is a disease caused by a toxin that is produced by a fungus. This fungus grows in dead plant material at the base of pasture. Warm and wet conditions allow the fungi to grow and so we see facial eczema in mid to late summer and autumn. When the spores produced by the fungus are ingested, a toxin the spores produce causes damage to the liver which results in sensitivity to sunlight and sunburn, especially on unpigmented skin. The external clinical signs (peeling skin etc) are just the tip of the iceberg, if you have cows with clinical signs you will have a lot more with subclinical liver damage.
The disease can have devastating effects on cow health, production and future reproduction. There is no treatment available which means prevention is essential. Facial eczema is prevented by dosing animals with zinc which binds the toxin and reduces its toxicity to the liver, and/or by spraying pastures with fungicides to kill the fungus before spores can be produced.
Feeding alternate feeds and pastures such as turnips, chicory, fodder beet, plantain, maize silage, PKE, meal and silage or hay (made before spores develop) reduces the amount of high spore pasture required in the diet, therefore reducing the number of spores ingested. Spores are thickest low down in the sward so keeping post grazing residuals above 4cms will reduce the number eaten. Fungicides only work when the pasture is green and growing. Do a spore count before spraying, it should be less than 20,000 immediately before application. Be sure the spray goes right to the edges of the paddocks, under the hedges and beneath any trees. Helicopter spraying won’t achieve this. The spray lasts 4-6 weeks so you should start doing spore counts after 4 weeks and respray as soon as they start to rise.
Knowing when to implement your prevention plan is important because it is a costly exercise if you get it wrong. We do regional spore counting, however these are only a snapshot of the area and can’t be relied on specifically for your farm and grazing system. We recommend doing spore counts on your farm. Its only $20 per sample and gives you exact info of what is happening on your property. High risk areas include paddocks shaded from the sun and wind as they are ideal areas for fungus growth and spore production as they are more likely to be warm and damp.
Because prevention is so important, it is essential that you are doing it right.
If your zinc level is too low, you will not get protection from the zinc and if it’s too high, zinc can be toxic. Trial work done in 2014 showed that around 70 percent of cattle did not have enough zinc to protect against facial eczema. Treating via water alone tends to be ineffective.
Drystock/young stock don’t drink enough water to intake enough zinc sulphate so are better off bollused. Boluses give 6 weeks cover from an initial dose and a follow-up dose gives an additional 4 weeks cover. To prevent Facial eczema you need to know how much zinc your cows are getting. Testing your cows once you have started supplementing zinc is the only way to know if you are giving the right amount. This is as simple as bleeding 10 mixed age cows 2 weeks after you have started your full rate of zinc supplementation. Testing costs around $12 a cow so it is very cost-effective way to make sure you are doing everything you can to avoid facial eczema in your herd. A GGT test on the same blood samples will tell us if sub clinical eczema damage is already happening.
If you have any further questions or are keen to have your cows zinc tested, then please don’t hesitate to give us a call.
Having lame cows result in a significant loss in milk production, reduce reproductive performance, and the resulting pain is an animal welfare issue. Below is a calculation of the average cost of a single lame cow if caught and treated early in Taranaki.
The economic impacts are:
This equates to a cost per lame cow @ $10 pay out = $615 (without drugs & vet visit)
Expensive right! This shows the importance of finding and treating lame cows early to prevent more treatment including antibiotics. This is without including severe cases that need drugs (eg Intracillin $35 + $105 milk not in vat = $140)
Simple management techniques can help prevent lameness. These include allowing cows to walk home unpressured and using the backing gate to take up space - NOT PUSH.
If you would like to talk to us about lameness on your farm then please get in touch.
We often come across cows during whole herd scanning that have ended up empty but they only had one mating date early in the mating season. What happened to these cows? They could have become pregnant then lost the pregnancy or they could be “phantom cows”.
Phantom cows are cows who start cycling post calving, may have multiple cycles and get put up for AB, then stop again. Their ovaries have gone quiet, and they have become a “non-cycler”. We don’t really know what causes cows to stop cycling again but it is likely that low body condition, a feed pinch, or sickness/lameness increases the risk or a cow becoming a phantom. The only lever we have to pull when it comes to dealing with phantom cows is phantom scanning.
Phantom scanning involves looking at your records to identify all the cows who had AB in the first three weeks and who have not returned. We then wait 5 weeks and come and scan these animals. The cows that are empty are put straight into a CIDR programme to give them their best shot of getting pregnant before the end of mating. People often use short gestation beef straws in this programme. The cows that are confirmed pregnant do not need to be preg tested again. It costs $4.50 to pregnancy test a cow and a CIDR programme costs around $60. With the price of cows at the moment and a good milk payout (for now at least) it can be well worth it.
CIDR scanning is similar but it just targets the cows that have been put through a CIDR programme. We wait 5 weeks after AB at the end of the programme and come and scan the cows that haven't returned. The empties we put back through another CIDR programme to again given them the best shot of getting in calf. Cows put into a CIDR programme are already non-cyclers so they are at a higher risk of being/ becoming non-cyclers at the end of the CIDR programme compared with a normal cow.
Resistance in cattle intestinal parasites is a big issue. To manage worm populations in your calves there are other management options rather than bombarding worms every 3 weeks with drench which greatly increases the risk of worm resistance. Grazing calves in front of the herd or 2 to a paddock allows adult cows to mop up worms, reducing worm burdens, decreasing amount of resistant worms in the population and lowering the need for drenches. Faecal egg counting prior to a planned drench can help to extend the length of time between drenches.
To get an overview of worm populations in our clients calves we will be taking poo samples as part of a worm survey when we are out vaccinating in Nov/Dec.
See below what our team have been up to over the last month or so.
Eltham Vet Services is a 13-vet practice that has served the farms and family pets of Central and South Taranaki with distinction since 1937. For your pet’s healthcare & your peace of mind contact or visit us.
