It’s been a particularly bad Facial Eczema (FE) season for dairy farmers across the North Island and now that the worst is almost over you might be left thinking what now? It is estimated that for every cow with clinical FE, another 10 cows will have subclinical symptoms, including reduced milk production and damage to the liver. So what should you expect going forward and what are some practical steps to reduce further production and stock losses? If you’ve stopped other tra

Recently, I attended a couple of Beef and Lamb field days on the subject of Management of weaner dairy & dairy beef stock. It was surprising and disappointing that the treatment of trace element nutrition by presenters was minimal. Advice ranged from merely stating that feeding stock well will mitigate trace element deficiencies (it does help, but depends on the severity of the deficiency) through to outright hostility to any specific recommendations of the use of trace eleme