Halting lameness

By Samantha Tennent

A big-city boy has found his feet in the rolling New Zealand dairy pastures, where his love for cows has developed into a passion for addressing lameness in livestock.

Cruising down the raceway, looking across lush green paddocks, Winston Mason knew he was a long way from the bustling motorways of Auckland, but it was that first summer in 2003 on a Taranaki dairy farm that he discovered his love for dairy cows and an obsession with treating and preventing lameness.

He was studying through Massey University to become a veterinarian and the summer placement made a huge impact on his career path. Until then he had only considered working with cats and dogs, but the city kid quickly changed his tune once he discovered the challenges caused by lameness.

“I got to see first-hand the problems lameness causes for the cow and the farmer and from then I wanted to find ways to help,” Mason says.

“It’s definitely a passion but there’s also frustration because I think as an industry we have been great at treating lameness but there are a lot of opportunities to help farmers prevent it in the first place.”

Each summer he went back to that farm in Taranaki and used vet clinics around the region for his clinical placement because of the abundance of dairy cows – and because it was home to the lameness expert, Neil Chesterton.

“It was great to be close to the lameness guru, his passion for lameness treatment and prevention is infectious,” Mason says.

“Nobody else would want to deal with lame cows on a Friday afternoon but Neil never hesitated and I think that’s the key to being able to make a difference in any role, enjoying the challenge of the unlikeable parts and finding something interesting and getting good at it.”

He enjoys the challenge of dealing with lame cows. Rather than seeing 20 cows that need treating, it makes him wonder what could be causing it and what could help reduce lameness within the herd. He loves problem-solving and has spent a good chunk of his career dedicated to it.

Midway through 2022, he and two other epidemiologists, Emma Cuttance and Greg Chambers, set up their own research company, EpiVets, with the ethos of doing research that genuinely helps farmers.

“It can be quite easy to do research for the sake of doing research sometimes but we want to ensure we are developing practical outcomes,” he says.

“We want to push further with the ‘so what?’ when we do research and then extend it with the intention of making improvements to the industry.”

EpiVets provides epidemiology and research services for its customers, including research advice and conducting clinical trials across New Zealand.

It predominantly works with dairy cows and calves but has been performing research across a range of livestock. The stakeholders are farmers but its customers are farm service providers such as pharmaceutical companies, levy bodies and milk processors.

Winston Mason grew up in the big city but during a placement for his vet studies he discovered a passion for cows and in particular, lameness. He and two colleagues have set up their own research company, EpiVets.

“Most of the time we tend to look at disease prevalence type scenarios, exploring how much disease is out there, what the risk factors are and what we can do to improve it,” Mason says.

“We’re really proud of what we have achieved and it’s been a fun challenge transitioning out on our own.”

Before EpiVets, Mason and Cuttance helped establish the research arm of VetEnt. It was a slow process, starting in 2015, and Mason initially spent one day of the week doing research and the rest as a clinical vet based out of Ōtorohanga. Towards 2019 the work built to three days of research and two days of clinical until there was enough to go into research full time.

“My job was everything farm vets do, from sick animals to herd health plans, and I really enjoyed it but getting into that research space made it really clear that was what I wanted to do.

“And stepping out on our own has been a good transition. It was the right time for me in my career.”

He is also most of the way through a PhD, where he is broadly covering lameness. He started by defining the lameness problem in NZ.

“I’ve been working with a bunch of farms across New Zealand, doing a lot of lameness scoring and looking at how long cows are lame for and if they’re treated appropriately, how quickly can they get back into the herd.

“The crux of it is early identification, to help cows recover quickly.”

He has also spent time exploring whether heifers can be managed and manipulated prior to calving to reduce their risk of lameness.

“I quite enjoyed the study, it was a practical piece of research and nothing like it had been done anywhere before.

“Unfortunately we didn’t get the results we wanted to get, but that’s research for you.

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“But we did find a few things farmers can do for heifers before and after calving that will reduce their lameness risk once they enter the herd, and potentially reduce their lameness risk right throughout their life, that’s one of the things I am looking at next.”

How to share messaging with farmers is always top of mind when he is doing any research.

“It’s another passion of mine, always looking at how we can share information with farmers.

“We can often be guilty of ‘telling’ farmers what to do but we need to understand what their barriers are, like what is stopping them from controlling lameness.

“I want to find ways to work with farmers to find solutions, considering what is within the realms of possibility.”

Before getting into research, Mason spent a number of years working as a clinical vet. His first role after university was as a mixed vet in Whangarei with Northland Vet Group, with the majority of his work with dairy cows. He enjoyed the lifestyle, especially being close to home, but after two years he moved back to Palmerston North to get stuck into a master’s programme in epidemiology at Massey.

He continued working in practice throughout his master’s programme, which included a year in Massey Farm Services –this time as a teacher compared to when he spent time in the clinic as a vet student himself.

“I enjoyed the students, it was a good experience especially because I was able to pass on what I had learnt since graduating.

“It can be intimidating having worldleading professors around you during vet school so it was good to feel helpful and pass on my experience about what the real world is like.”

After completing his master’s he jumped on a plane to do a typical Kiwi OE, headed for the United Kingdom. He went with the intention to work simply to fund his travels but found he really enjoyed the job.

“Everything is just so different, I enjoyed learning about the different systems and how they farm over there.

“It was tempting to stay but I just couldn’t get my head around yearround calving and how farmers have multiple revenue streams. And I realised how much I preferred the efficiency of the New Zealand seasonal system.

“Especially from a herd health approach, you can make big system changes that make a big difference versus the individual animal work I was doing in the UK. It just felt like you were preventing a sick animal from getting sicker.” with the Victorian government and Melbourne University. But the drawcard of NZ brought him back home.

He brought back plenty of lessons from his time in the UK, particularly around lameness as it is monitored and managed differently there.

“They use tools like regular locomotion scoring to detect lame cows and treat them earlier, whereas here we tend to use it as an auditing and welfare checking tool.

Nowadays he is based in Raglan with his partner, Amy Ross, and is not missing those busy Auckland motorways although he supports several Aucklandbased teams.

“I’m a big fan of the Black Caps, Warriors and the Blues, even though they like to hurt me,” he laughs.

“But I don’t play any sport myself anymore thanks to a few injuries. I just stick to my guitar and travelling around for work and catching up with friends.”

“I think there are a number of things they do over there that we could implement here to help reduce issues like lameness on our farms.”

Another international experience that left him appreciating NZ farming was a 12-month stint he did in Wagga Wagga, Australia,, in 2020-2021. He was working for VetEnt Research at the time and used the opportunity to work

He is loving the new venture and opportunities.

“It really is a great lifestyle having a research role that takes me all over the countryside and the community in Raglan is fantastic, so I’ve got the best of both worlds.”

“And from seeing a lot of farming systems I truly believe we are as efficient and good as anywhere in the world here in New Zealand.”