Putaruru Veterinary Services 2023

20/10/2026

20/10/2026

We love seeing the future of farming during our local AG-Days & South-Waikato Group Day! It was fantastic to be out there and see so many proud children, dedicated families, and beautifully presented animals!

We're incredibly proud to support these special events by sponsoring ribbons and being part of the communities we work alongside every day.

A huge congratulations to all the children that participated with their pets, and a big thank you to the judges, volunteers, schools, and families who help make these days possible. 👏

08/10/2026

Happy Vet Nurse & Tech week!
Some vet techs get chocolates. I got a face full of gratitude 😅

21/09/2026

For the last months, every time someone has asked us what we’ve been doing lately, the answer has mostly been:

Disbudding calves.
Followed by more disbudding calves.
Then some extra disbudding calves.

At this point we're on first-name terms with most of the horn buds in the district.

Now, we can make a post about disbudding what usually comes with words like animal welfare, safety, best practice and future management.
All perfectly true.

But let's be honest...
The photos tell the story better than we ever could

🟢Disbudded early = smooth head, no fuss.
🟢 "Polled" with a little scur = mostly understood the assignment.
🟠Dehorned at 4 months = still got there, but the hard way.
🔴Never done = now accepting applications as a Viking warlord.

Sure, those horns look impressive. They're also surprisingly good at catching gates, testing fences, poking holes in other animals and coming really close to sensitive body parts.

That's why we spend spring crawling through calf sheds while staring at foreheads.

The moral of the story?

Disbudding calves early is quicker, easier on everyone involved, and helps prevent a lot of headaches later on.
Also, it means your future bovine is less likely to resemble a Viking longboat.

25/08/2026

Nothing says family farming quite like having your calf-check technique judged by someone who still puts their gumboots on the wrong feet 🫣

18/08/2026

Things are getting a bit exciting around the clinic!
We're currently having some earthworks done, which means there will be a few big machines around the place over the coming week 🚜

The good news? The shop is still open between 9am-4pm!

The bad news? Truus has taken control of the digger.

She's spent most of the evening & morning perched on top of it looking thoroughly unimpressed with these developments and questioning whether anyone consulted the chickens before work began. 🐔

11/08/2026

AG Day season is back!

We're once again supporting our local schools with:

🐐 FREE 5-in-1 vaccinations and castration/docking for AG-Day lambs and goats
🐮 FREE disbudding and 5in1 vaccinations for AG-Day calves when we're out on farm disbudding

We've been around enough AG Day animals to know that "they're only staying outside" is usually a short-lived plan. Before long, they’re on the couch, in the shower, or standing at the back door demanding entry 😂
And yes, we've also had a random calf in the living room. More than once 🫣

Whether they say baa, maa, or moo, we're happy to help get them ready for the big day.

📞 Give the clinic a call to book in.

29/07/2026

Some clinics can have KetoMax 15% displays so big they fill up our whole clinic...
Meanwhile, our display allowance for this year’s AgriHealth NZ Clinic Display Competition was approximately 1 square metre, so we did what any sensible rural vet clinic would do and got creative.

The result? Proof that a little imagination goes a long way when you're short on space 😂
Now we're just hoping the judges appreciate fine Duplo architecture as much as we do!

Don’t forget to check it out when popping into the clinic in the coming month 🐮

12/07/2026

One of our farm dog patients needed a bit of extra warmth and monitoring, so instead of spending the evening in a kennel, she ended up with the deluxe package: a spot in front of the fire, a mountain of blankets, and a very committed junior vet who refused to leave the patient's side. ❤️

One thing about rural (vet) life — the whole family gets involved. The children grow up helping recover farm dogs by the fireplace, bottle-feeding orphan lambs and goat kids in their bedrooms, holding torches while calving a cow, and thinking that untwisting a cow's uterus is a perfectly normal topic of conversation around the dinner table.

06/07/2026

Seven adorable puppies came in for their first vaccinations today, with plenty of help from our junior team on weighing duties and cuddle supervision. ❤️

The puppies worked hard too — accepting treats, soaking up attention, and being outrageously cute.
An hour later, this was the result... 💤