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.
Welcome to Our End-of-Season Newsletter.
We're delighted to welcome all our new clients and farmers joining the area this season.
It's been a strong year overall — high milk payouts, good summer rain, and cattle prices reaching record highs. May's great weather also made drying off relatively smooth, and our technicians have been busy supporting farmers through the process. If you'd like to talk through how we can help with drying off next season, reach out to your key vet.
One area to keep an eye on: slow grass growths through late March and April followed by late rain created conditions for facial eczema on many farms. We saw multiple clinical cases around the district and plenty of farmers felt it on the milk docket also. This was a good reminder of how important it is to monitor on-farm spore counts regularly and keep up with zinc testing as the season winds down.
Within the clinic we have some exciting updates to share from the Eltham Vets team:
We hope you'll join us at one of our upcoming winter events — details are listed later in this newsletter. And most importantly, we hope you all find some time to rest and recharge over the break. You've earned it!
Thank you for your continued support — here's to a great season ahead.
Bryan is the new Practice Manager who started in May 2026. An experienced commercial leader who is excited to join the Eltham Vet team.
His love of food, motorcycles, mountains and the great outdoors has brought him to Taranaki. He is in his happy place when doing any of the following: cooking on his Big Green Egg BBQ, cruising on his Ducati or hiking around our beautiful Taranaki Maunga. Here he is climbing mountains in Spain!
Crypto (Cryptosporidium parvum) is a common cause of scours in young calves and can be frustrating to manage. There’s now a new vaccine available—Bovilis® Cryptium—designed to help reduce its impact.
Rather than vaccinating calves directly, this works by boosting antibody levels in pregnant cows and heifers. Those antibodies are passed to calves through colostrum, helping protect them in those vulnerable first weeks of life.
How to use it:
For broader cover, it can be used alongside Bovilis Rotavec® Corona to help protect against four key causes of calf scours—crypto, rotavirus, coronavirus, and E. coli.
As always, good colostrum management is key—calves need plenty and quickly, for the best protection.
Special offer: We’ll be offering this vaccine at a discounted price for the 2026 season only.
If you’re interested in using this on your farm, get in touch with the clinic.
LIC have released data to date regarding the national herd spring 2025 mating. This does not include any data regarding animals inseminated with sexed semen. Below is a table that compares averages from spring 2024 to spring 2025 at the same time as last year. LIC collates data from 7365 herds and 3.5million cows, however only around 2.6million cows have aged pregnancy data, which is presented below.
Overall the not in-calf rate and conception rates are slightly behind last year, the 6 week in calf rate is stable and submission rate was slightly up. Across the North Island all 4 parameters have slipped and South Canterbury has performed the best across all regions. Of the Eltham vets scanned farms our empty rate average is 11% which is pretty standard for our farms, much better than the national average. However Empty rate is a pretty poor measurement to compare herds as mating length differs so much between farms. 6 week in calf rate is the measure we should be using. How does your herds 6 week in Calf rate measure up to the national average of 70%. Are you in the top 25% of farms and getting a 6 week in calf rate of 74% or higher? A good 6 week in calf rate means your herd is efficient and productive. Discuss your results at your annual animal well being plan consult or book in for a free repro consult. Contact the clinic to arrange.
Farmer night
Our annual winter seminar is coming up on the 30th of June from 6pm come along to learn about latest research, WIN prizes and have some food and mingle. Topics include wearable monitoring, milk docket analysis, heifer growth and Johnes control.
BCS Workshop
On Monday the 6th of July from 10am-1pm. This is a free on farm event learning about body condition scoring and what cows look like at precalving targets.
Spring first aid
15th of July from 9.30am-3pm. Cost of $230.00 per person. This is a seminar aimed mainly at new entrants to the dairy industry or people to update their skills. Topics covered include calvings, downer cows, calves and sick cows. Both theory and practical skills will be covered.
Please contact the clinic or email info@elthamvetservice.co.nz to put your name down.
The most common strains in cattle in New Zealand are S. Typhimurium, S. Bovismorbificans (primarily affect the gut) and S. Brandenburg (primarily causes abortions.) In Spring 2025, outbreaks due to these strains were frequently seen on both islands with S. Brandenburg, historically a South Island disease, becoming endemic in Taranaki. In 2025, MPI reported the most cases in cattle in NZ ever (See Figure 1 below). S. Bovismorbificans tends to cause higher death rates during outbreaks than S. Typhimurium. There is also an emerging strain - S. Give, only identified in New Zealand since 2019. This has now been found in most regions. The disease is usually spread through ingestion of infected faeces or aborted material.
WHAT DO I SEE ON MY FARM IF I HAVE SALMONELLA?
Generally, cows will be depressed, go off their milk and have poor appetites, and they often have foul smelling khaki green diarrhoea. In the case of S. Brandenburg, cows often abort, have retained membranes and are also very sick.
WHAT CAUSES SALMONELLA OUTBREAKS?
On average, it is estimated that 9% of the herd are carrier animals at any time. Carrier animals can shed Salmonella for months or even years in the faeces. Public Salmonella bacteria can survive in the environment for a long period of time (e.g. months to years in ideal conditions like wet paddocks, effluent ponds, or dry, shaded areas such as cattle or sheep yards). Conversely, it can be killed on hard surfaces in days with freezing or heating.
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF A SALMONELLA OUTBREAK?
In a 500-milking cow herd, with 10% sick and 2% deaths, the direct costs through dead cows and loss of milk can be over $30,000 in a single season. This is not counting the milk out of supply, risk to humans, or impact on future production and reproduction. This far outweighs the cost of preventative vaccination for the herd. WHICH FARMS ARE HIGH RISK? Risk factors for Salmonella outbreaks in dairy cows include neighbours affected, a common water source, mixing of groups of cattle and a sudden diet change. Stress is almost always involved; hence we often see cases soon after dry off or around calving.
HOW CAN FARMERS REDUCE THE RISK OF AN OUTBREAK?
As well as avoiding the risk factors above, isolate sick animals, remove and bury aborted material, discard milk from scouring cows; and avoid grazing at-risk groups of animals on effluent paddocks. Vaccination of cattle with Salvexin®+B (preventatively or in an outbreak) is recommended. This has been proven to reduce shedding, reduce incidence of clinical cases and reduce stock losses during outbreaks. An ideal time for herd vaccination is in late lactation. Chat to your vet about fitting a vaccination programme into your animal health plan.
Holly can offer tailored macro and trace element seasonal planning for your dairy herd, including drystock where requested. Bring along your current inshed mineral blend and she will assess and explain what’s in it, why it’s included, and whether it’s meeting your herd’s needs.
As an impartial and qualified ruminant nutritionist, Holly's recommendations are based on sound nutritional principles and your farm’s specific requirements. Where available, blood or liver test results will also be incorporated into the assessment to give a more accurate picture of your herd’s mineral status and help fine-tune your plan. Charging is based on an hourly rate. Please contact the clinic to book a time with Holly.
WATCH THIS SPACE - LIVER BIOPSY SERVICE COMING SOON
Facial eczema (FE) is a major production limiting disease in NZ dairy cattle. Hidden impacts include: reduced milk production, poor fertility, lower growth rates and liver damage. Late-season spore count rises caused severe FE on some of our farms this year.
We did some zinc monitoring this season (10 bloods taken from cows a minimum of 2 weeks after full dose is reached) Very few herds achieved fully protective zinc levels in our monitor testing. Results were:
Recommendation:
Regular spore counting on your farm helps determine when to start and stop zinc treatment. Monitoring blood zinc levels is essential to confirm cows are protected. Test blood zinc levels early in the season to ensure prevention strategies are working. Early testing means adjustments can be made ensuring protection.
Both Johnes disease and BVD are important diseases that can affect your reproduction and milk production negatively. With Johnes disease, one clinical case a year can indicate that there are anywhere from 3-15% of your herd sub-clinically infected. In the case of BVD, a PI (persistently infected) animal with BVD on your farm can have severe and ongoing reproductive losses, including a high return to service rate, high empty rates, abortions throughout pregnancy, further PI’s born on farm, and birth defects. LIC offers testing for both Johnes and BVD. Johnes can be tested during herd testing and can pick out your positive and high-positive cows in milk samples, and also offers blood testing for individual animals. For BVD LIC offer a status pack, a bulk milk monitor pack, and PI hunt tool. We recommend at least a monitor pack is done by every dairy farm, every year. Both Johnes and BVD testing for LIC can be booked through your key vet, contact us to check your booking. Farms that have been booked in the past through Eltham Vets will be automatically rolled over this winter for both BVD and Johnes.
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.
