The power of nature

A few years ago, James Dallinger, who milks over 500 FriesianX cows in Maungatautari near Cambridge, witnessed the healing power of nature when his wife Kirsty experienced psoriasis-like skin problems post the birth of their 2^nd child. Kirsty recalls: ‘Despite many attempts to treat my skin with conventional medicines such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, etc. I saw no real improvement in symptoms. One day a nurse in the Medical Centre referred me to a Naturopath practicing a natural and holistic approach. She gave me a health protocol with oregano oil, along with few other natural products and my symptoms disappeared within a few weeks and have not returned since, which is a great relief.’

‘A new way to keep my animals healthy’

A few years later James read about AHV in a US Dairy journal and became interested in the plant based natural solutions for cow health they provide to dairy farmers. Unfortunately, at that time, AHV had not started in New Zealand yet. So, when earlier this year a befriended farmer in the Cambridge area asked him if he would be interested to talk to someone from AHV NZ, he immediately agreed to meet with them.

‘I have been looking for a natural way to keep my cows healthy, especially their udders, also with the aim of reducing our dependency on regular methods. Conventional methods often don’t work as well as desired and, in many cases, cows return and need to be dealt with again. After Janneke van Wagtendonk, Managing Director for AHV NZ, explained how the AHV udder support solutions work, I bought a bucket of Quick, Extra and Aspi boluses each and used them on cows with deviating milk values. AHV also analyzed my herd test data and we looked at the history of each cow and prioritized what cows to support first.’

‘The first HT data that came back showed some cows had already  responded really well to the boluses, and some are still in the ‘cleaning up’ process. I am very happy that the cows can remain in production after the boluses, which means less hassle and no risk of mistakes to be made by me or my staff.

Achieving great results

One cow blew me away though, she had already been cared for several times during the season, yet the same quarter continued to reoffend, after the 3^rd time, I decided to try the AHV boluses as a last resort to see what would happen. A few days after the boluses, we observed a continued improvement in her udder health, and she was a healthy four titter again!

By now, AHV has started a demonstration of the udder health solutions on James’ farm by administering the boluses to 50 cows. Janneke says: ’James is really open minded about our solutions and keen to help us generate NZ data with our products to show NZ dairy farmers they also work in the NZ pastoral dairy system. The first results 4 weeks after giving the boluses (done 2 months prior to drying off) are encouraging: production is sustained more and milk values look better in AHV cows versus cows that did not receive any boluses. We will take these cows through the dry period and keep monitoring them into the next lactation, as a study in Ireland has shown ongoing positive impact on udder health support. We hope to give cows more lactations, more production per lactation and longer lactations, all while maintaining milk that can go into the vat’.