Meet our Experts - Ilyse Jennens

Graduating at the end of 2010, Ilyse Jennens works as a farm, mostly dairy vet and branch manager at Franklin Vets in Waikato, New Zealand, where she is also a director and shareholder. She is an InCalf and accredited mastitis advisor and accredited BCS assessor. Additionally, she serves as a committee member of the cattle chapter of the Australian and New Zealand College of Veterinary Scientists and chairs a community dairy farming group focused on increasing the wealth, sustainability, and satisfaction of dairy farmers in the local region.

In her veterinary role, her passion lies in preventative herd health and collaborating with farmers to achieve their goals. For many farms, these goals include increasing production by improving pasture utilisation and animal health. She finds it exciting to see the success of changes made in the previous season, such as improved reproductive performance or reduced somatic cell counts, and the subsequent benefits to production gains, cow welfare, and farm staff efficiency and satisfaction. The availability of welfare monitoring and benchmarking tools such as WelFarm, and technology like wearable tags and collars to measure live cow data, has greatly assisted in providing true measurements and proactive rather than reactive advice.

Ilyse has a growing interest in sustainable and regenerative farming. Having recently completed the course from Vet Sustain & VetSalus, A Veterinary Approach to Sustainable Food and Farming, she continues to expand her knowledge in this area and seeks opportunities to incorporate it into her work with farmers. She feels inspired by the role she can play in contributing to Franklin Vets’ commitment to becoming more sustainable.

If you have a project that you feel the VetSalus network of experts would be able to assist on please contact us.