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.
I have only been given space for a couple of paragraphs for my editorial this newsletter so I will make it brief; We find ourselves at the tail end of another tricky season which plenty of farmers will be wanting to forget in a hurry. I would like to give a big thanks to the 99% of dairy clients that complied with our requests around dry cow therapy the past month. We have had some great, informative discussions, and hopefully most of you got through the consult process unscathed and maybe even learnt something. We know farmers are getting it in the neck with paperwork and unfortunately it’s no different on our end however we are working towards making this process as streamlined and efficient as possible while still adding value to your farming operation.
Here at the vets we are finally feeling the staff pinch that many businesses across NZ have been dealing with for the past few years. The loss of several colleagues over the past 12 months has put the pressure on those that haven't gone on an OE or retired! We have been lucky enough to add some new faces to our staff lately and we have a locum vet joining us for spring to help lighten the load. If you see a new face in the clinic or an unfamiliar voice on the end of the phone please introduce yourself and give them a big Eltham welcome.
We have had a few clients asking about when the golf tournament will be held; and to try increase participation from our clients and maximise the chance of good weather, we are moving the tournament to late summer. We would love the day to not only attract the hardcore golfers (and socializers), but also those that just want to pop down for a BBQ and a yarn and hopefully a summer twilight tournament will be just the ticket!
Leon
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING will be held at the Vet Clinic, Railway Street, Eltham
on Thursday 11th July 2024 commencing at 12.30pm.
AGENDA
1. Apologies
2. Minutes of the 2023 AGM
3. Annual Report
4. Adoption of Balance Sheet
5. Appointment of Consultant Chartered Accountant and Financial Reviewer
6. Election and confirmation of appointment to Executive
7. Directors Remuneration
8. Motion to register under the Incorporated Societies Act 2022.
9. General Business
Mrs J Rowlands (dairying members) and Mrs Jo Bielski (Sheep and Beef) retire from the executive by rotation and are available for re-election. Mr D Johnson retires by rotation and is unavailable for re-election
Nominations for these positions must be received by the Secretary by midday Thursday, 27th June 2023. Nomination forms are available at the clinic.
Financial Accounts for the year ended 31.3.2024 will be available on request as soon as the financial review is complete.
It is with great sadness that we learned of the recent passing of former CEO and long time Eltham Vet, Dave Higham.
Dave came to Eltham from England with his wife Margaret and a growing family in the late 60’s on a three year contract. Three years came and went and he just never left.
Dave is remembered as a highly respected vet who was very good at his job but also had no problem telling clients off if he thought they needed it. He was a stalwart of the local community and helped with the creation and building of the Eltham Squash Club. He was also a very talented and competitive cricketer and footballer playing for both Eltham teams for many years with great success. Later in life he became a top football referee and just like on the farm he would stand no nonsense.
Dave became CEO in 1988, taking over from Henry de Jong and remained CEO until his own retirement at the end of 1999.
He is largely responsible for the growth of this practice to what it is today. He set the framework and created a culture that meant vets chose to stay at Eltham rather than move on.
He was widely respected within the veterinary profession and was awarded the Allan Leslie Medal for services to the vet club movement in his last year of practice. Most of all though, he was a good bugger.
Our love and sympathies go to his family and friends, of which he had many.
Rest well Dave and thanks for everything you did for this practice.
This is the time of year we should be thinking ahead about calf rearing and the time to vaccinate your cows to help prevent Rotavirus in your calves. Rotavirus is a costly and aggressive viral cause of calf scours, affecting calves from 3 days – 6 weeks of age. Calves are infected by the faecal-oral route, the virus attacks the gut lining cells which can cause severe
diarrhoea resulting in a sick, dehydrated calf. Outbreaks often have a high number of deaths, and those that recover often have permanent gut damage, reducing nutrient absorption and resulting in reduced growth rates for the calf’s life.
Rotavirus vaccination of your cows helps prevent rotavirus in your calves. Which vaccination you choose should be discussed with a vet. Vaccinations need to be timed to be 2-3 weeks before the planned start of calving, boosting the colostrum for 9-10 weeks of calving. Vaccination is designed to stimulate the cow’s immunity so that she produces lots of antibodies against Rotavirus in her colostrum. This boosted colostrum is then fed to the calf within the first 12 hours of birth, which allows these antibodies to be absorbed by the newborn calf’s gut wall into its bloodstream. This provides an instant immunity for the first 3 months of its life, while the calf develops its own immune system.
All in-calf animals in your herd should be vaccinated. Even though you may not be keeping calves from heifers as replacements, there will still be a virus challenge to the surrounding environment from them.
To ensure you get the most out of your vaccination programme plan your system so that the calf receives adequate first milking, preferably >22% Brix colostrum from vaccinated cows within 12 hours of birth.
Set up your calf sheds so they are big enough, dry and have good drainage so that the bugs don’t have the environment to survive and multiply in. If you had Rotavirus last year, make sure all the old bedding has been removed and the shed disinfected. Arrange failure of passive transfer (FPT) testing early in the season to make sure your colostrum procedures are working. We take a blood test from 10 calves 1-7 days old and can measure if they have had sufficient colostrum.
Please contact the clinic to book this in.
A new neonatal calf scour vaccine is coming onto the market in time for the upcoming Spring. BioBos RCC is a new to NZ vaccine similar to the other vaccines given to cows and heifers to boost the colostrum antibody levels to rotavirus, coronavirus and E coli. Its distinguishing features are that it only requires one shot per season to be given to cows and heifers and it produces very little tissue reaction so you don’t get long lasting lumps. When calves consume colostrum and milk from vaccinated cows during the first two weeks of life, the increased antibody levels present, prevent neonatal diarrhoea caused by bovine rotavirus, coronavirus and E. coli (K99), and reduce faecal shedding of virus in calves infected with bovine rotavirus and coronavirus. This decreases the environmental contamination with these viruses and helps slow the spread of infection.
We are planning to replace Scourguard with BioBos this year for most farms unless specifically requested
We are looking to run our popular SPRING FIRST AID seminar on Wednesday 26th June 9.30am-3.30pm
Spring First Aid topics include:
This seminar is targeted at new entrants to dairy farming and anyone wishing to brush up on their knowledge.
The cost of $230 includes course notes, morning tea and lunch.
Please contact the clinic by phone 06 764 8196 or email info@elthamvetservice.co.nz ASAP if you want to register yourself or your staff.
Last year Intracillin injectable had its milk withholding time adjusted as of June 2023. Its withhold went from 72 hours (6 milkings) up to the new withhold of 96 hours (8 milkings).
A number of you would have seen that change on the new box, when having a vet treat your animals, or more recently when discussing your RVM at the time of your dry cow consult.
The reason for this increase is due to the increase in the recommended dose rate for penicillin containing products, including Intracillin injectable.
The new dose rate is now 20mg/kg once a day for 3 days. In short rounded terms, this means 30mL for a standard 400kg Jersey cow, and 35-40mL for a 500kg Friesian.
If you have any questions then please contact the clinic.
Meloxicam is a Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID), that offers pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects in cattle for 48-72 hours and can have beneficial effects on your cows with clinical mastitis. Studies have shown that using Meloxicam in conjunction with your chosen antibiotic to treat cows with mastitis has many positive impacts including improving treatment success rate and improving reproductive performance. Results from two different studies have shown that using meloxicam in a mastitis case can increase bacteriological cure rate by 32%, increase first service conception rate by 48%, and increase chance of pregnancy at 120 days post-calving by 29%. Next time you have a case of clinical mastitis, consider including meloxicam in your treatment plan for a decreased recovery time, and increased potential long term benefits for your herd.
No one likes getting mastitis during the dry period, but knowing how to treat it quickly and effectively is really important in saving you time and reducing damage to the cow.
When a case of dry cow mastitis is found it is important to get her back to the shed, stripped out thoroughly to remove as much of the infection as possible, and then treated with your standard milking cow antibiotic. Using an anti-inflammatory such as meloxicam will help to reduce and prevent further swelling in the udder in turn reducing damage to the tissue that produces the all important milk. When she has healed you will no longer be able to strip milk out of the udder due to her ‘drying off’ and you will be left with the clear fluid (serum).
It may be tempting to use dry cow antibiotic that you used at dry off. It is important not to use these as they are designed to be used in an udder that is still milking and has a good blood supply. When the udder shuts down for winter the blood supply is reduced and cannot process the antibiotics in dry cow therapy, which can result in inhibitory substance grades when you start milking in spring.
Taking a milk sample and bringing it into us to culture can be helpful in deciding what antibiotic to treat with depending on what pathogen is cultured. Make sure you do this in a sterile manner to not contaminate the sample, so we have optimal chance of culturing the bacteria involved.
Hopefully lameness levels are low out there now that most cows are dry or close to drying off. Lameness is usually associated with time spent on yards and races so most herds get a break from it over the dry period. However, as we’ve been sitting down doing annual farm reviews and renewing farm prescriptions for next season we see a large variation in the use of anti-inflammatories and their use with lame cows, so now is as good a time as any to talk about increasing the cure rates of lame cows using anti-inflammatory drugs.
A recent UK study into lame cows divided cows into four groups:
The study assessed whether the lameness had been “cured” by locomotion scoring the cows (watching the cows closely for any lameness or changes to their normal walking pattern) 35 days after they were treated. Only 25% of the cows had cured when treated by corrective trimming only. For the group 2 cows who also got a block the cure increased to 36%. For cows who got anti-inflammatories but no block the cure was 29%. The highest cure rate was 56% in the group that got trimmed, a block and a 3 day course of anti-inflammatory injection.
These results are interesting for a few reasons. First of all, the low cure rates across all the groups surprised me. Most lame cows in NZ will be getting just a trim or a trim and a block, so at most we can expect around 1/3 to be “cured” five weeks later. This is probably due to the fact that locomotion scoring will pick up cows that aren’t obviously lame but are still not walking normally due to the sore foot. Regardless, it clearly shows that the cows are still being affected by the original lameness. Second it plainly shows that anti-inflammatories have a positive impact on actual cure rates. I have been guilty of thinking of anti-inflammatories as a nice (and probably right) thing to do for cows in pain due to lameness but I didn’t necessarily expect it to improve the speed with which the cow would recover from the lameness and therefore reduce the impact on production, body condition and repro.
Each case of lameness is estimated to cost between $250 to $500 when you take the cost of treatment, and flow on effects into account. A three-day course of ketomax costs around $50 so it would make a lot of sense to spend that to increase cure rates. And obviously it goes without saying use hoof blocks!
Congratulations to our Winner Lisa Swan, who won a Barkers Box after buying Bravecto for her lucky pets. Pop in store to buy your cats and dogs some Bravecto to be in the draw to win a sheep skin throw this coming month.
We have recently changed our Lepto vaccination protocol. Changes are that we will no longer give out Lepto vaccination for farmers to give themselves, and calves 1st shots are now given as early as 4 weeks old.
These changes reflect that Leptospirosis is a significant bacterial disease in cattle that poses serious risk to people working with livestock. There have recently been a number of local farmers becoming seriously ill after being infected with lepto so it is a health and safety issue that we need to take very seriously.
Studies have shown that calves can become infected and become carriers from 4 weeks of age. Our vaccination programme for calves now starts at 4 weeks to ensure there is proper protection in place to prevent lepto in cattle, farm workers and other contractors who work with animals on farms. The vaccination is then boosted 4 weeks following the 1st injection and then a follow up 3rd injection is given in autumn/winter at around 6 months old to booster the vaccination and put the calves in line with herd and heifer vaccinations.
There is a new lepto vaccination avaliable that includes a new strain. The newly identified Pacifica strain circulates in cattle and spills over into humans and in particular, farmers. Cattle appear to be the maintenance host for Pacifica as this strain has yet to be found in wildlife. There are no clinical signs associated with Pacifica infection in cattle. The symptoms in people are severe and the clinical signs are more varied. There can be the classic lepto symptoms of fatigue, high fever, and severe headaches but infected persons may also show loss of appetite, vomiting, rapid weight loss, sore throats, and chest pain. We will be rolling out this new vaccination next season starting with calf vaccinations in late spring.
We will be creating calf vaccination runs that start in late spring based on areas/roads which will be booked well in advance. If you can make your farm’s prebooked appointment work we will be charging a $10 visit fee (normally $60)
If your calves have not had a booster or your herd or heifers need to be booked in please contact the clinic ASAP to arrange.
For those of you opting in for Fonterra’s cooperative difference, have you had your annual farm review/animal health plan done for the 2024/2025 season?
Hopefully most of you have had your AHP, mastitis/dry cow consult and RVM consult done this autumn, which means you will be set up for this coming season with all your vet compliance paperwork sorted already. If you have not had a AHP consult later than 1st Feb 2024 please contact the clinic to arrange for a consult in June or July before we get busy with spring . We do have a number of farms that have had their AHP consults but have yet to be emailed their plan, these will be emailed in the next 2-4 weeks. If you are unsure talk to our front staff. From next season our plan will be to do 3 in 1 consults - RVM, AHP & DCT in autumn, March through to May to help avoid those last minute AHP consults when your shed inspection is due in 2 days
As we go around the district scanning, we often hear people frustrated with a higher than expected empty rate and comments such as “makes you wonder why we spent all that money on CIDRs, trace elements, bulls, extra feed, scratchies”, whatever it may be. We also hear comments like “I think it’s the young cows letting us down” or “one of the bulls must have been a dud” or “the cows just didn’t seem to be cycling”. If we sit down to do our animal wellness plan at this time of the year, after we’ve scanned your herd (or you’ve done a milk test), we can have a careful look into your mating information and work out what actually led to the result you got (i.e. we can do a “repro review”). Then we can plan to improve results in the most cost-effective way possible. There’s no point spending money on extra bulls next season because you feel like the bulls were the problem, if in fact bulls weren’t the problem at all and instead you had a poor conception rate in the AB period.
So, if you are looking at getting your animal health plan done in the next months and have concerns over your reproduction performance, why not tag on a repro review and once again get more value out of your visit to the vets!
Hi, my name is Briar. I’ll be helping out in reception as well as in the small animal hospital.
I have previously had 14 years experience working in the vet industry, working in a variety of clinics in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.
In my spare time you will find me helping out on my partners drystock farm, playing netball or getting stuck into the garden.
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.
