Farm Services
Professional farm services & advice with a personal touch
Cattle | Sheep | Goats | Deer | Lifestyle
At VetsOne we have experienced Production Animal Vets who offer professional services and advice, aimed at partnering with you to improve animal health and welfare outcomes for your farm business. We understand Hawkes Bay Farmers, having cared for them for generations. We offer all the standard farm visits and emergency care, but also really enjoy working in the advisory space, including mineral and disease testing, as well as personalised Animal Health Plans. Call to speak to one of our friendly team or come into the clinic and see us in our office located conveniently next to the Farm Retail Area.Services
Farm Visits & Emergencies
Our experienced Farm Services veterinarians are available for farm visits to provide a number of routine & non-routine services, including treatment of sick animals, routine surgeries (eg. castration, rigs, vasectomies), diagnostic testing, health plans and advice. It can get busy though, so bookings are essential – please call the clinic on 06 878 8666 to make an appointment. If you have an animal emergency, we will prioritise getting someone to you as soon as possible.
Pregnancy Scanning
Pregnancy scanning of cattle, from simple ‘Yes/No’ to full foetal ageing is available on request. We use a combination of state-of-the-art ultrasound scanners and manual palpation to provide you with the most accurate information possible on which to base your farm management decisions. The optimal time for ageing cattle pregnancies is between 6 weeks after the bull comes out of the mob, through to 16 weeks post-mating.
Unfortunately, at this stage we do not offer pregnancy scanning for sheep.
Velveting
The removal of deer velvet (soft antlers) by law requires the use of correctly applied local anaesthetic nerve blocks and appropriate methods of restraint. Our veterinarians are fully trained and experienced in the safe & pain-free removal of deer velvet, and will ensure the quality of your product is maintained. For those wanting to be trained in the process of removing deer velvet, training & supervisory programmes are available on request.
Fertility Testing
Healthy and fertile breeding males are central to an effective on-farm breeding programme. Breeding soundness examinations and semen collection/evaluation are available on request for bulls and rams. Make sure you book breeding examinations well prior to the start of mating to ensure you have your team tested and ready to go on time.
Mineral Testing
Trace elements such as copper, selenium and cobalt, are essential for life and need to be kept within specific ranges to avoid production issues caused by deficiency or toxicity. The mineral status of your animals (and indirectly, your property) can be assessed through tissue samples such as blood and liver, either collected by a veterinarian on-farm or from animals sent for processing (‘MineralCheck’). An effective mineral testing programme consists of collecting the ‘right samples from the right animals at the right time’, to form the basis of appropriate mineral supplementation advice from your veterinarian. Without such testing, you may be wasting money on supplements you don’t need or costing yourself production through animals performing poorly.
Disease Testing
There are a number of production-limiting health conditions and diseases of farmed animals which can be easily prevented through appropriate treatment and/or vaccination programmes. Testing your animals for the presence of these diseases can be carried out as part of an existing investigation into overt deaths, illness or abortions, or simply to determine if there is an underlying health issue causing poorer than expected animal performance. Tests can be performed on a variety of animal and plant tissues, including blood, biopsies, faeces, post-mortem and pasture samples. Conditions and diseases which can be identified through testing include; internal parasitism (‘worms’), fluke, Facial Eczema, Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD), Johnes Disease and Theileria (‘tick-borne anaema’) to name a few. This type of diagnostic testing allows your veterinarian to work with you to develop ongoing animal health programmes which keep your stock performing optimally.
Herd/Flock Investigations
Larger scale herd and/or flock investigations are usually carried out in response to an on-farm health event involving multiple animals or where the potential exists for significant stock or production losses. In these cases, multiple forms of on-farm sample collection and testing (see ‘Disease Testing’) may be carried out in order to determine the underlying cause, prior to developing a preventative animal health plan. Examples of these types of investigations include; abortion outbreaks, sudden deaths and stock illthrift.
Animal Health Plans & Advice
For those wanting to move up to the next level of optimising their whole-farm approach to animal health, our experienced farm veterinarians can work with you to develop and customise a full Animal Health Plan. This incorporates gold standard advice on the use and timing of preventative animal health measures down to the individual stock class, including a wealth of product, reporting and treatment information. Our proprietary VetPlan software also means your Animal Health Plan is easily accessible from any web-enabled mobile phone or computer, giving you full control of your data in real-time.
Restricted Veterinary Medicines
With the increasing awareness around antimicrobial drug resistance in the human population, the prescription and use of Restricted Veterinary Medicines (RVM) on-farm is coming under greater scrutiny. Just as with human doctors, veterinary clinics are not legally allowed to sell RVM’s over-the-counter or prescribe them to an animal they have not recently seen, except under very specific circumstances. However, where you are engaging regularly with your vet through farm visits and other forms of contact which enable a supervisory relationship to be established, an RVM Authorisation can be set up allowing you to purchase and hold some types of medicines on-farm for use under specific conditions. Talk to your veterinarian for further information about RVM Authorisations.
Farm Product Advice
Our large retail space contains a full range of animal health products, including drenches, dips, minerals, vaccines and over-the-counter animal remedies. Our friendly knowledgable staff are always happy to provide product recommendations and point you in the right direction to find what you are looking for. If we don’t currently stock something you are after, we may be able to get it for you – just ask!