Eltham Vet
Eltham Vet Services is a 10-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.
Just like that, we’ve blinked and calving season is upon us once again. With the ground sodden from a wet June and early July, we’re all crossing our fingers that Mother Nature now delivers a good run of clear days and mild nights to help ease the load. On the sporting front, it’s been a rollercoaster few weeks. A massive congratulations to the Stratford-Eltham Rugby Club for going back-to-back in the Premier Division – a fantastic achievement and a credit to the local talent and community support. It was a shame to see my much beloved Thames Valley swamp foxes just miss out on securing the Ranfurly shield last weekend. With the score line ending at 97-0 the result could’ve gone either way.
Since our last newsletter the team here at Eltham Vets have been flat out. We’ve recently hosted a number of seminars and evening events, covering everything from repro reviews to calf rearing to spring transition nutrition and wearable technology. It’s been a real privilege to put these events on for you, and even better to see such great turnouts and lively discussion. If you have any ideas for future topics, please don’t hesitate to get in touch – we’re always looking for ways to make our sessions more useful and relevant to your farming operations.
We have also had a significant change on the Eltham Vets Board with the retirement of longtime Director, Shawn Matthews. After 18 years of dedicated service, Shawn has stepped down from his role. We extend our sincere thanks for his commitment and leadership over nearly two decades. We’re pleased to welcome Gareth "Twiggy" Edwards as the newest member of the Board. We look forward to the experience and fresh perspective he brings to the role. Welcome aboard, Twiggy.
As always, spring is a testing time. We know the long days, sleep-deprived nights, and endless to-do lists are part and parcel of farming in spring. Our team is doing their best to get to everyone as scheduled, but please understand that emergencies must take priority during these hectic weeks. If we need to shuffle your visit, we’ll do our best to keep you informed – your patience and flexibility are hugely appreciated.
Cheers, Leon
Shortly we will be changing supplier for our standard Prolaject B12 500ml & Prolaject B12 + Sel 500ml to a Vet only Supplier once our current stocks are depleted.
Cobalex B12 500ml in a Red/Grey packet & Cobalex B12 + Sel 500ml in Red/Gray/Yellow packet - the product is the same, price is the same & dose rate the same - Calves 2 -3 ml, Cows 4 – 6 mls.
Duomax 4000 500ml + Sel & Duomax 4000 1000ml + Sel, is still available. Dose rate Calves 1 – 1.5ml, Cows 2 -3ml
All Products have NIL withholding period.
A positive transition from dry to milking will maximise the lactation performance of your dairy cows. 75-80% of clinical disease occurs in the transition period, 3 weeks either side of calving. Achievable targets in regard to different diseases are adjacent, and trigger points for when you should be considering reaching out to your key vet. As Eltham Vets already have access to your breeding companies data, to evaluate milk quality or for fertility focus reports, we find it helpful if you can enter transition disease information into Minda or MyHerd. This can give us useful retrospective insights for end of season discussions.
If you have been over the trigger points listed to the right for milk fever cases in previous springs please contact us to book in some transition cow blood testing now
Clinical mastitis costs the NZ dairy industry millions of dollars every season. Milk culturing every case of clinical mastitis is a very useful tool in the fight to reduce these costs
Last season (2024/2025), we processed 1,018 milk samples from clinical mastitis cases across local herds
The vast majority of cases were caused by either environmental (e.g. Strep uberis) or contagious (e.g. Staph aureus) pathogens—and each requires a different management approach.
Why culture every case?
Sign up now for our “Pay for 8, Get 2 Free” mastitis culture deal this season.
That’s 10 milk samples cultured for the price of 8—ideal for tracking early-season trends and guiding treatment decisions. Ideally take samples from every clinical mastitis case even if you don’t get them all cultured. This makes it easy for non-curing cases to be investigated.
Contact us today to register and book your discounted samples. Proactive mastitis management saves milk, money, and cows.
Failure of passive transfer (FPT) testing is a way to measure how many antibodies (IgG) have been transferred via colostrum into calves. Calves are born with no adaptive immune system so transfer through the colostrum is essential for calf health and growth. NZ wide, 1 in 3 calves do not receive adequate colostrum, and this makes them 2.5 times more likely to get sick (especially scours) within the first 6 weeks of life. Testing is a great way to see how good your colostrum management is. If you don’t measure it, you don’t know!
This season we are offering a heavily discounted package deal of only $150 in early spring including 2 farm visits with 12 calves, aged 1-7 days old, bled at each visit. This price includes the calf blood testing, lab tech time and reporting fee.
Please phone reception to book in this great deal or contact your key vet.
Metrichecking your herd has huge benefits to getting cows in calf early and reducing empty rates. From local New Zealand research, we know that:
Batch metrichecking in your herd could look like:
Batch metrichecking involves a few more vet visits but you could gain a lot of extra days in milk and reduced cow wastage simply by metrichecking and treating infected cows. You can metricheck your own herd with training.
Call the clinic if you have any questions or to organise your metrichecking/training.
We bang on about body condition score, especially about hitting BCS targets at calving time, but it is for good reason. If you can hit BCS targets at calving, your cows are set up to maximise production, reproduction, and health. There is good science behind this also, it is not just a random figure pulled out of someone’s head.
Almost everyone tells us their cows are at BCS target but how confident are you? There is the saying, which we’ve been bandying about at the clinic, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. If you haven’t had someone who is BCS accredited scoring 70 to 100 cows at the planned start of calving then you may be behind targets, and you may be leaving production and improved repro results on the table. And it is about more than just the average of your herd. We want to know how the first and second calvers are doing and what the spread of body condition scores are. It is no good having an average of 5 if there are a bunch of cows in BCS 3.5 and a bunch in BCS 6.
Moral of the story, book one of the vets to pop out and make sure you know where you are sitting at calving time. It is quick and easy and cheap and BCS at calving is likely to be one of the single biggest factors you can change to improve the profitability of your farm, no kidding!
Spring can be a stressful time with a lot of uncertainties in your day; how many calves are there to pick up today? Has that cow been calving for a bit too long? Will I get any breakfast before midday? Hopefully some of these FAQ’s below will help you to take away some of the uncertainty of when you should get a vet out to help during those stressful spring days.
Has that cow been calving too long?
A cow should take between 30 mins – 1 hour, to calve and no more than 2 hours, a heifer should take 1-2 hours to calve and no more than 4hours. Progress should be made every 20 minutes, and if this is not happening, she needs to be brought in and assisted.
How long have you been assisting her calving for?
When calving a cow, progress should be made with getting the calf out relatively quickly. If you have been attempting one way of assistance for 10 minutes with no progress, try a different approach, or if you have been attempting to calve her for more than 30 minutes with no significant progress, you need to call the vet.
When should I call the vet immediately?
Certain conditions need veterinary attention ASAP. Some of these conditions include a prolapsed uterus, a sick looking calving cow with a dead/rotten calf, a calving presentation where you have no idea what is what, a ‘true’ breech calving with only the tail presenting, and a normal presenting calf that is so big it is not coming out with an appropriate amount of traction (remember NO vehicles should ever be used to calve a cow).
When do I call the vet for a down cow?
If a cow appears to be down for metabolic reasons only (i.e. no evidence of calving injury), she should respond to IV metabolic bags (e.g. Glucalmag etc) within 30 mins, or if given under the skin, within 2 hours. Follow this with an oral drench if she can swallow. If there is a partial response, you may follow with another bag under the skin, otherwise call out the vet. If you are suspicious of a calving induced injury, after 24 hours of appropriate downer cow treatment (hip-lifters, clean water accessible, good feed, protection from the elements, pain relief) with no signs of improvement, call out the vet.
Farmers Evening
45 farmers had American hotdogs & attended our annual farmers night. Tina discussed FPT (see front page article for more info on how to make the most of our special and book in your FPT testing) Holly spoke about high milk feeding in calves to maximise growth & udder tissue. Ryan presented results from 3 of our local farmers who had great repro results. He looked at common factors on these high reproductive performing farms & found that reaching BCS targets and time spent on heat detection were the common denominators.
Wearables Workshop
27 farmers attended the workshop where Holly & Ryan discussed how to interpret your wearable data & how to get your vets involved. Contact us if you would like our help with your wearable data.
Spring First Aid
This year we had 19 farmers attended our annual spring 1st aid seminar. Learning about calving cows, downers, sick cows and calves & practical tips for treating animals. We run this annually so keep an eye out next year.
Eltham Vet Services is a 10-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.
