Last updated 22:08, Tuesday, 17 June 2008

When we visit farms, we often get into discussions with our clients about one or two health issues that are relevant to their own enterprise.

On the hoof: Vets often discuss herd health issues while doing something else

Sometimes it’s just something to engage us in a conversation, sometimes it’s to challenge ‘received wisdom’ or it may be a problem of which they had previously been unaware.

Much of this discussion is carried out on-the-hoof – if you’ll excuse the pun! – while we do a few pregnancy diagnoses or trim feet.

Often nothing is written down, records of the advice given are not kept, and no methods of assessing the benefits of the advice to the farmer are put in place.

I make a note of the discussion in my diary, and log the thought to check how things are at my next visit. By the time my next visit comes around, some other pressing issue has come along to occupy everyone’s mind, and the previous issue gets forgotten.

If, as the saying goes, “time is money”, there is an argument for setting aside a specific time to sit down with your vet to discuss the general health of the stock on your farm. This would bring together those on-the-hoof discussions we are always having in the yard.

For many, this already happens once a year, but it’s in a rush in the week before the milk buyer’s farm assurance inspector arrives or the FABBL inspection is done.

The aim of this meeting is usually to produce a Farm Health Plan. It is duly printed off, the inspector gives it a cursory glance and ticks the box, and then it gets filed away and gathers dust until the next year – unless someone is having trouble getting to sleep at night.

I’m not against the Farm Health Plan; there are farmers who use it as a regular reference point. The problem is that it is simply a statement of what is being done on the farm at one particular time; there are limits on how useful it is in monitoring the effects of changes on the farm, and what the benefits or problems caused by those changes are.

According to the recently released Milk Road Map, 95 per cent of dairy farms are to have a Farm Health Plan in place by 2010.

This is the time to look at how we carry out Farm Health Plan programmes in the UK.

Defra is partnership funding several livestock industry, veterinary and animal health organisations which are running flagship programmes on active herd health planning in England. These set out to demonstrate that, by having a coordinated policy of assessing a farm’s health status, setting out a programme to sort out any problems present and avoiding new problems being introduced, and measuring the before and after situation, it is possible to improve health and welfare on your farm.

This should also have demonstrable economic and financial benefits to your business. Anything you set out to do should result in you being better off. It would be easy simply to rely on rising commodity prices to increase incomes, but most farms have areas which can be run better, gaining more income with increased investment in their Health Plan. This is especially the case when many other costs are rising as fast as the commodity prices.

Everyone will have read somewhere: “Mastitis costs UK dairy farmers £x million per year” or “Bovine virus diarrhoea can cost a 100-cow beef herd £50,000 in an outbreak”.

For many, these figures are meaningless; disease cost models are often irrelevant at farm level.

However, Reading University is compiling inter-based disease cost calculators which will work out, making reasonable assumptions, what a range of diseases will cost you, along with the costs of some disease control measures.

It is then possible to calculate the benefit of controlling a specific disease on your farm.

Do you know which diseases you have on the farm? Have you looked to see if any diseases are present? Have you asked your vet how to deal with those diseases? Do you want to know what those diseases are really costing you? Will those diseases affect your ability to trade in the future? How is the health and productivity of your stock affected? How can you be sure that spending money on control will give you any return?

One comment we hear often is that you just get one problem sorted out, and the vets discover a new disease to spend money on!

The problem is more often that, on any one farm, not all diseases are present or they may not be showing their full effect because other more costly problems are masking them.

Clearing one up may leave another to become more obvious eg campylobacter abortion in beef cattle can cause such levels of foetal loss that, until it is cleared up, an extended calving pattern due to endemic BVD infection may not be obvious or seem so important. Both will have a negative effect on health and productivity.

I would suggest the first thing to do is consult your vet, and discuss which of the diseases you know about on your farm will yield positive results with active control measures.

The next step would be to find out which infectious diseases are present, by carrying out some diagnostic tests. Once you know what is there, a disease cost assessment should be carried out, along with a control cost assessment. Then you can decide if you want to sort the problem.

Part of this decision will require a biosecurity assessment and action plan to see if it is possible to reduce the risk of disease re-entry to the farm if you undertake control/eradication measures. Reducing or clearing a disease may be a pointless exercise if it is simply going to come back with infected stock, staff, dirty equipment, wild animals, etc. because of a failure to physically protect your business.

The whole programme should be set out in an understandable, practical way, and there should be a way of measuring its benefit, along with a means of ensuring the progress made is maintained in the long-term.