NZ Animal Evaluation Manager

Contagious mastitis in cows is often spread during milking. Minimise the spread by maintaining healthy teat ends, using well-operating milking equipment, and disinfecting teats after milking.

Ryegrass selection for a dairy farm system involves key decisions: choosing the right ryegrass variety (from annual to perennial), picking an endophyte for insect control, and selecting ploidy (diploid or tetraploid) and a heading date.

Switching to full-season once-a-day (OAD) milking is a practice considered by many dairy farmers, especially in New Zealand.

Grass silage is pickled pasture, preserved through the conversion of its sugars into lactic acid by bacteria. This process extends the shelf life of the pasture beyond what it would have if exposed to open air.

Disbudding is the process of removing a calf's horns between one to six weeks old. This prevents injuries to both the farm team and other animals.

Discover the benefits of flexible milking for dairy farms - DairyNZ provides insights on milking intervals beyond OAD and TAD.

Irrigation systems require suitable application depth, rate, and return periods to meet soil, plant, and climate needs. This page encourages evaluating your system against its design specifications to find potential improvements.

Backing gates are tools used in the dairy yard to improve cow flow into the dairy, leading to more efficient milking. Moving the gate little and often takes up space in the yard, while still providing cows enough room is important.

Clusters in dairy milking are a set of components that include a claw and four fully assembled cups. Selecting the right clusters and setting them up correctly will increase milking efficiency and improve animal health.

Sodium is vital for dairy cows, aiding in water balance and nerve and muscle function. It's expelled routinely and needs replacing. This page discusses how certain regions, like the Central Plateau pumice soils, can be deficient in sodium.

Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) is a widespread disease impacting around 80% of New Zealand's dairy and beef herds, causing losses in reproduction, increased disease, and reduced growth and milk production.

Succession planning is the process of transferring farm assets, knowledge, and skills to the next generation.

Black field cricket is a major pasture pest in regions such as Northland and Auckland, predominantly affecting clay soils that crack in dry summers. These crickets feed on pasture grasses at night and hide in soil cracks during the day.

Establishing a successful sharemilking or contract milking relationship requires thorough due diligence. Understand your own situation, including goals, values, financial standing, and farming practices.

Renewing pasture is crucial for maintaining healthy dairy farms, and there are four primary methods to consider: cultivation, spray-drilling, undersowing, and oversowing.

Managing high-quality pasture during feed surplus periods is a crucial skill in pasture management. This page explains that pasture surplus often develops in spring, which if unmanaged, can lead to low-quality pasture affecting milk production.

The nature and scale of many dairy farming businesses is changing and there are many self-employed business opportunities available for individuals and partnerships.