Here you’ll find practical ways to keep your herd healthy - from creating an Animal Wellbeing Plan with your vet, to preventing disease, tracking cases, monitoring herd data, and training your team to spot issues early.
Summary:
Herd health is important because healthy cows produce more milk, stay productive for longer, and require fewer treatments.
Proactively manage animal wellbeing
Create and share a clear animal wellbeing plan that prioritises prevention, pain relief, and early treatment to keep your herd healthier and performing better.
- Talk to your vet about improving animal health.
- Check out the Cared for Cows Standard on our website.
- Pain relief for mastitis, lameness, calf scours = faster recovery, better reproduction, fewer culls.
- Cover calf rearing, colostrum, vaccinations, parasite control, trace elements, lameness, and reproduction in your plan.
- Share the plan with your team.
- Stress early diagnosis – early treatment = faster recovery, fewer culls.
What you can do
- Share the plan with your team and highlight key points in meetings.
- Use the whiteboard to track weekly, monthly, and seasonal tasks.
Identify, track and monitor
Set clear health targets and keep accurate records so you can spot issues early and take the right action for each cow.
- Keep accurate disease records.
- Work with your vet to set acceptable case numbers and action plans.
- Record key dates, disease cases, and cow IDs for culling decisions.
What you can do
- Discuss any health issues and required actions with your vet.
- Set up a system to monitor and record illness in your herd.
Proactively prevent disease
Build a strong disease‑prevention plan, record cases accurately, and keep your whole team involved to stop issues early and protect herd health.
- Include parasite and disease management in your plan.
- Watch for risks during mating and when new animals/people arrive.
- Keep records to know your true number of cases for each disease.
- Set targets with your vet and have a plan for actions.
- Make sure they know what is expected of them to prevent disease
- Ensure they know how to report issues (Biosecurity NZ website or hotline).
- Record key dates for actions in your Plan and keep records.
- Maintain NAIT (National Identification and Tracking Programme) records for traceability.
What you can do
- Identify the disease and parasite risks that regularly affect your farm.
- Create a plan for each risk and review common issues on DairyNZ’s Biosecurity page.
Check data and monitor your cows
Use your data and regular herd checks to spot health or performance issues early and keep cows and heifers on track.
- Use your Farm Insights Report and vet advice to track mastitis, lameness, and in-calf rates.
- Low 6-week-in-calf rate? Check feeding, trace elements, or uterine health.
- Monitor Body Condition Score (BCS) and test results.
- BCS four times a year.
- Watch for seasonal for lameness, disease and infections and treat early.
- Separate sick cows until recovered.
- Weigh every six weeks to hit growth targets.
What you can do
- Monitoring BCS helps you keep track of herd health and productivity.
What's the opportunity for your farm?
Productivity, Profitability and Sustainability.
Productivity
- Healthy cows produce more milk and live longer.
- Strong genetics mean better breeding opportunities.
- Fewer sick days = more milk per cow.
Profitability
- Healthy, productive cows = higher milk volumes and quality.
- Less money spent on treatments and wasted time.
- Fewer deaths or culls = more profit.
Sustainability
- More milk for the same emissions.
- Less waste from lost animals and milk.
- Better cow health can deliver up to 30% of the production gains needed to meet emissions targets.
Need help right now with herd health? Talk to us
Customer Service Team
Our Farmer Support Team is available 24/7 for urgent help and immediate guidance.
Local support
The My Co‑op app has contact details for your local Farm Source team for more complex issues.
Chat in person
Your Farm Source store is there for local face‑to‑face support with our team. They’re always happy to help.