A Veterinary Approach to Sustainable Food and Farming - Case Study from Ilyse Jennens

Ilyse Jennens, a livestock veterinarian from North Waikato, New Zealand, is passionate about preventative dairy herd health and working closely with farmers to achieve their goals. Last year, Ilyse completed our online course,”A Veterinary Approach to Sustainable Food and Farming”, (delivered in partnership with Vet Sustain),  to further her knowledge and help farmers achieve sustainability goals.. This article outlines her final project, focused on integrating sustainability into farm veterinary practice.

How to support a farm animal client transition to more sustainable methods of farming?

Farm Background

The farm is a 10-acre property with a small livestock operation (8 goats, 30 breeding ewes, and 2 chickens). There is a house with power provided by solar panels, water from rainwater collection and septic tank for sewerage. Fruit, vegetables and trees supplement animals’ diets and animal manure is used to provide fertiliser for vegetable gardens.  Income is generated from the sale of store lambs at weaning. 

Farm Goals: 

• Produce sufficient fruit, vegetables, meat and eggs to meet dietary requirements of the farming couple.

• Provide sufficient income to cover council rates and farming related expenses 

• Provide safe environment for animals on farm with animal welfare needs met to highest possible standard 

Key Sustainability Issues on Farm

The current challenges on farms can be characterised as environmental, ethical/social and economic challenges, see below summary table. 

Scale of opportunity to catalyse change

While the farm’s small size limits large-scale impact, the farmers are engaged in their local community and could share successful sustainability strategies with neighboring farmers. This collaboration may help inspire similar-sized properties to adopt sustainable practices.

Context within land-sparing land-sharing continuum  

The farmers lean toward the "land-sparing" approach in the land-sparing vs. land-sharing continuum, focusing on improving biodiversity while producing food on their low-yielding land. Their engagement with the local community and commitment to sustainable practices positions them to lead by example.

Practical solutions  

Principles of agroecological and regenerative farming align with the farmers’ existing approach where they recognise the connectedness of the health of the soil, plants, animals and humans supported by the farm and the wider community.  Solutions for this farm are outlined below.

Regenerative grazing strategies 

The close network of farms in neighbouring communities offers the opportunity of grazing diversity by allowing occasional cattle grazing to assist with parasite and pasture control. Fencing is planned to split existing four paddocks to seven which will assist ability to rotationally graze. However, livestock would still be required to remain in the same area for a reasonable period of time. 

An alternative grazing strategy would be to instead incorporate a rotational grazing system where ungrazed areas are allowed longer rest periods (up to 60-90 days) to allow root and shoot recovery of plants in the pasture.

This would improve sward and root diversity to encourage increases in soil organic matter, improve water and nutrient cycling, diet variability for grazing livestock and disruption of parasite lifecycles. 

Livestock & crop rotations 

Vegetables are currently grown in designated vegetable gardens and fertilised by transfer of animal manure.  Planned fencing could allow the opportunity to trial small areas of vegetable cropping directly to paddock such as autumn grown brassicas . 

This would provide animal manure directly to soil, increased biodiversity, deeper rooting improving soil structure, additional crop yields for trade or sale, rest period for land area, interrupting parasite life cycles, livestock grazing of remaining crop providing dietary variation and release of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potash) making them more available to future crops.  

Herbal leys 

Further regrassing of paddocks could use mixed pasture blends to improve soil structure, minimise fertiliser requirements, provide nutritional variation for grazing livestock, drought resistance and assist parasite control. Examples include: 

• Legumes (such as clovers) to assist with nitrogen fixing and provide high protein 

• Chiccory to assist with soil structure due to deep roots and provide anthelmintic properties due to presence of tannins 

• Cocksfoot for drought tolerance 

• Plantain for dietary mineral provision 

Shelter 

With plans to divide paddocks further and the desire for shelter to always be available, there is an opportunity to purchase or build smaller and lighter shelters that could be transportable to reduce the number required and allow for regenerative/rotational grazing strategies.  

Nutritional 

Provision of dietary variation through mixed pasture blends.  Silvopasture is currently limited to some extent by the size and placement of trees on the farm. The advantages of silvopasture include an increasing amount of edible biomass available, improved water and nutrient cycling, nutritional diversity and increased biodiversity. 

If more planting is to be carried out, consideration of plant diversity and nutritional qualities is recommended along with placement within the new paddock layout to allow provision of shade for animals. Protection by fencing would be required initially until trees grow enough to withstand damage from browsing behaviour.  

Animal health  

Facial eczema and ryegrass staggers are frequent conditions observed in the region, caused by fungal or endophyte toxins on ryegrass dominant pastures. These conditions can be prevented by grazing of lower risk pasture species. Provision of nutritional variation, and use of mixed pasture blends may further assist.  

Parasite control can be assisted by grazing tall pastures over short periods, minimising exposure to larvae at dwarf base and rest periods reducing the number of surviving larvae. Plants containing tannins with anthelmintic properties (such as chicory) will assist parasite control, particularly for goats which have a higher susceptibility to parasite challenge. Integration of other livestock species through periodic grazing by neighbouring cattle would further assist parasite control.

Animal health monitoring should continue with facial eczema spore counts, faecal egg counting, body condition score checks and mucous membrane colour assessment to determine need and timing of anthelmintic treatments. Where drenching is required, considerations include accurate dosing, use of combination drenches (containing more than one active ingredient) and treating only unhealthy animals.   

Sustainability Oriented Herd Health Plan

Farm Team Support

Ilyse’s project also explores the ADKAR model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) to help farm teams transition to sustainable practices. 

The farmers are aware of challenges and have a desire to solve them to improve sustainable practices on their farm.  They have some knowledge of regenerative practices, but recognise that there are limitations to their knowledge and actively seek information from reliable sources and experts.  

The ability to change is limited by financial and time constraints as the property provides limited income to support infrastructure improvements. Reinforcement of change could be assisted through opportunities for learning.

Veterinary support is currently available in person and on the phone, but could be enhanced by access to digital educational resources. Group-based advisory support for small farm owners is also an option to provide more affordable guidance. The role of the veterinarian would be to facilitate discussions and provide credible information and resources.

Veterinary team support 

Beyond supporting farms with credible advice, veterinarians have a role to play in demonstrating sustainable practices in our lives and workplaces.  Changes in the workplace require the support of the entire vet-led team to be truly effective. 

Ilyse’s practice is a member of VetSalus and has commenced working through the Vet Sustain Greener Practice Checklist. Areas already underway include responsible resource use, sustainable operations and responsible medicine use. The next step for the practice is to complete a carbon calculation and explore additional frameworks for further sustainability initiatives.

Summary

This case study forms part of the assessment criteria on the VetSalus and Vet Sustain course “A Veterinary Approach to Sustainable Food and Farming”. Our May 2025 cohort is open for pre-order now and places are limited. To find out more, please visit our dedicated learning platform https://learn.vetsalus.com/pages/a-veterinary-approach-to-sustainable-food-and-farming-may-2025