Livestock

Introduction of composting mootels to a Reefton farm has improved cow health and happiness, the environment, and extended milking with less feed wastage. By Anne Hardie.

A study of three recently installed composting mootels on West Coast dairy farms showed generally positive results in the high-rainfall region. By Anne Hardie.

Twenty years ago understanding of cow comfort was very different – there were virtually no scientific standards to measure well-being in farm animals. This encouraged Boehringer Ingelheim to study the impact of their long-acting anti-inflammatory pain relief Metacam® on reducing the pain associated with these essential farming procedures.

Experience with organic free-range poultry has led a former Hawke’s Bay share-milking couple to breeding pedigree Jersey cows. Words and photos Anne Hardie.

Manawatu vet Lisa Whitfield outlines the ways to check whether your calves are sick.

Kaipara vet Rory Dean worked through the theory and the practical systems to prevent milk fever with sharemikers Joe and Danielle Kehely resulting in a staggeringly low milkfever incidence of three cases (0.57%) after calving 550 cows compared to last season’s case load of 6.1%.

NZ livestock systems are reliant on internationally produced feed. This represents a risk especially to the profitability and sustainability of the dairy industry. By Raewyn Densley, Jeremy Hunt, Lauren McEldowney, Phil Journeaux, Julian Reti Kaukau.

On-Farm Research at the Poukawa Research Farm did much pioneering research on calf rearing from the mid 1990s, rearing about 8000 calves across a wide range of trials. Paul Muir offers his thoughts on what is still relevant to current calf rearers

Failure of calves to get sufficient colostrum and acquire early immunity is a world-wide problem, Paul Muir writes.

New Zealand breeding companies are concerned the proposed model for a single breeding worth (BW) that includes genomic evaluation risks disincentivising investment in research and development. Anne Lee reports.