Born and schooled in Matamata, Adrian started practice after graduating from Massey at Hurst and Stewart (at the same time as John Harrison) where he literally did everything from cats and dogs to beef and sheep to dairy to thoroughbred stud work and racehorses. Those were the days when Vets tackled everything, and he recalls when John and he did cutting edge surgeries on horses including inserting carbon fibres into a bowed tendon in a racehorse, colic surgery and hernia operations within the 1st three years of practice. They instigated preventative herd health programmes (known as PAHAPS) and got involved with mastitis control and reproductive management programmes.
After 3 years in Te Awamutu, Adrian joined Matamata Veterinary services as a partner and spent 20 years there doing mainly equine and dairy work before concentrating mainly on dairy herd health, nutrition, farm management programmes and mastitis consultancy work. During this time he was also an equity partner and remote manager of a 350 cow dairy farm in Southland.
Then for 2 years, he operateda milking machine and mastitis consultancy business importing, selling and installing an Irish milking system. He ended up installing approximately 60 milking machines throughout the country.
The next career move was to Pfizer Animal Health as the veterinary services manager and sole veterinarian providing technical advisory support for all species. Pfizer provided a very supportive learning environment which allowed me to learn about managing, coaching and developing people and high performing teams. Business is about people, their continual development and the relationships they develop with each other and their customers.
Adrian gained his Australian College membership in Pharmacology in 2000. In the last 2 years at Pfizer, much of his time was spent helping develop InfoVet with VetEnt which will provide exciting opportunities for veterinary practices throughout New Zealand overseas.
After 10 years at Pfizer, Adrian decided to rejoin practice back where he started, at VetEnt as Dairy Team Leader.
