Vet Kirsty Ashcroft shares farmers’ top tips for getting value from wearables — from starting with the basics and avoiding alert fatigue to using data with your vet to lift decision-making and animal health.

Proactive visitor biosecurity management helps protect your herd and your business. Visitors can unknowingly bring in diseases, weeds or pests that threaten animal health and farm productivity.

Animal feed can affect animal health, milk quality and food safety, and the source of dairy products can be important to buyers and consumers. That’s why it’s important when buying and selling feed, it can be traced to its origin.

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.

Integrated cattle handling facilities, including head bales, crushes, and AI races, are essential for safe and efficient animal health tasks for both cows and handlers.

Dairy stockmanship covers interactions between cows and people, and when practised effectively, creates a safe and efficient work environment; it also improves animal health and production.

What prompted the Lincoln University Demonstration Dairy Farm’s move to full-season 10-in-7 milking? And what impact has it had on animal health, fertility, production and staff wellbeing?

Managing down cows is crucial for dairy farmers. When a cow is down, it's important to promptly diagnose the cause, decide on a treatment, and follow a management plan.

Heat stress in cows happens when they can't dissipate the heat they generate, leading to discomfort and lower milk yields. Unlike humans, cows can start feeling the stress at temperatures below 20°C.

Clinical ketosis is a metabolic disease in cows, occurring when they are in severe negative energy balance, particularly during early lactation and may occur as a secondary condition to other health challenges the cow may be experiencing.

Endometritis is a bacterial inflammation in the uterus that often occurs after calving. Around 25% of cows have this condition before mating starts.

Facial eczema (FE) is a disease caused by a toxin from a fungus in pasture, predominantly in late summer and autumn. It can cause liver damage, skin irritation, and a drop in milk production.

Leptospirosis is a highly infectious bacterial disease affecting humans and most mammals. It is a significant human health risk causing flu-like symptoms or severe ongoing illness.

Nitrate poisoning in cows happens when they eat feed with high nitrate levels, often in late autumn or winter.

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.

Copper deficiency in cattle, common during winter/early spring or in fast-growing calves over six months, can lead to issues like weight loss, reduced milk yields, reproductive problems, and anaemia in cows.

Calf scours, or diarrhoea in calves, can be caused by multiple factors and if untreated, can lead to severe dehydration and even death. This disease disrupts the normal water movement in the digestive tract, leading to water and salt loss.