Infovet - what it can do for you
"From early on I could see the benefits of accessing a lot more information via computer, rather than chasing down bits of paper at critical times of the year. Invariably some of the data would be missing and you would end up making decisions with only part of the picture in front of you."
With an average herd size of 750 cows across their client base, access to whole herd data is increasingly important to North Canterbury Veterinary Clinic's staff and their farmer clients.
Practising vet Annabel Harris is one of a new generation of tech savvy vets who has gone out of her way to understand and introduce Infovet to her large dairy herd clients.
She is particularly impressed with the programme's pregnancy testing module which allows scanning data to be uploaded to MindaPro.
In mid-December, early scanning coupled with mating data quickly revealed the effectiveness of a non-cycling cow treatment programme for one client.
"We knew early on that we had achieved a 47% conception rate in treated non-cycler cows. This reassured the farmer that non-cycler intervention was effective on his farm."
The majority of her clients are on MindaPro. With the web-based Infovet platform, Annabel is able to access this data which is coupled with information from other sources including veterinary history and Fonterra milk collection data. This dramatically increases her ability to tune into what's really going on in her client's herds.
Alerts are loaded into her programme that signal when she has clients with bulk SCCs climbing over 200,000 (orange alert) or 300,000 (red) over a five-day rolling average. This allows immediate communication with the farmer and the implementation of appropriate actions.
"Infovet gives me the ability to track the effectiveness of a treatment within and between farms and is helping us develop our consulting ability and identify problems before they become major," says Annabel.
Richard Stalker from Riverside Vets in Ashburton is also using Infovet to analyse and help improve herd health issues on an Animal Health Focus Farm near Ashburton. Mastitis analysis and herd conception performance are two key areas Infovet is proving invaluable here.
"All those areas that relied on pieces of paper are being eliminated. We look forward to being able to really get a handle on areas like CIDR use, and how effective they were, and giving clients a true conception rate figure."
"Our farmers are right into the data because they want the information that the data delivers, they can see how it all fits to provide them with more timely and usable recommendations. As veterinarians, Infovet creates an opportunity for us to work alongside and add much more value to our clients' operations".
