17 Jun 2019
Sally Wilson discusses how her practice decided to harness this concept and make it a constructive tool for both farmer and vet.
Sally Wilson
Job Title
Image © SGr / Adobe Stock
Most dairy farmers still associate their herd health plan (HHP) with their farm audit – giving their vet anything from three weeks’ to three hours’ notice if it needs updating.
Dairy farming is developing at such a rate, and, with it, herd health and production are taking leaps forward – making it an extraordinary time to be a farm vet.
The reduction of antimicrobial use has been remarkable over the previous two to three years; the concept of farm assurance is now accepted as normal and high levels of welfare are expected to be the minimum requirements.
“Prevention is better than cure” has never been a more suitable term in farm animal vetting – so why not use the HHP to put this into practice?
When hurriedly checking through data for one of my farmer’s HHPs, knowing the audit was the next morning, I thought back to my days in New Zealand in the early 2000s.
I remembered, in the lead-up to drying off, vets used to invite the farmer into the practice to have a “dry cow meeting”. I was always intrigued by what used to happen during these meetings.
It turned out that, really, the meeting wasn’t necessarily all about drying off, but was towards the end of the milking season when the farmers weren’t too busy.
It was also an opportunity for the vet and farmer to review how the farm had done that year – disease incidence and productivity, for example, were reviewed – and look ahead to next season with a view to improving on last year. Of course, then the vet was able to prescribe his or her dry cow therapy for the upcoming drying off period.
When trying to collate data at 11pm one evening, in time for an audit the next morning, I suddenly thought we should have “dry cow meetings” with our farmers. During these meetings, we could complete the HHP update, but also use it as an opportunity to review the year and look ahead to the upcoming year.
These are the sort of meetings vets and farmers often intend to hold on a regular basis. We do have clients who religiously book these meetings and seem to benefit greatly; similarly, we have farmers who are busy trying to do everything else, and meetings such as this drop to the bottom of the list until a crisis occurs – then the meeting cannot be held quickly enough.
Using our HHP reviews as a chance to hold these meetings has really broken a barrier with many of our dairy clients.
Pre-planned annual HHP review meetings are constructive because:
Food assurance schemes help to provide consumers with the confidence food has been produced to particular standards. These schemes are mainly voluntary arrangements, although many milk buyers make certification in an assurance scheme a specific requirement for their suppliers.
Most dairy farms are members of the Red Tractor scheme. HHPs should, therefore, contain these requirements as a minimum.
Additional standards are set by milk buyers and supermarkets. As the milk buyers have required farmers to collate and share more and more information, so we have updated our HHPs to reflect these requirements.
We use the same template across all our dairy farms, irrespective of who the milk buyer is. In doing so, the general health status of the herd is not only more current, but much more detailed.
Some dairy farms are not required to perform to the level at which, for example, supermarket producers are required to perform. However, using the template containing all required information may mean, for example, if a farmer doesn’t know his or her bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) status, a discussion will take place at this part of the HHP to find out why he or she has never felt the need to investigate. This could lead to a conversation about, for example, being BVD free, taking bloods on farm, assessing status and introducing vaccination.
This generates work for the vet and improves the health status of the herd – everyone is happy.
The contents of a typical dairy HHP are outlined in Panel 1. If the farm in question has, for example, only half the information available for your initial HHP template, this provides an opportunity to discuss the information that isn’t available. Aim to look at ways of harvesting this data over the next year, so the information can be added into next year’s HHP.
Two extremes of farmers seem to exist when it comes to using vaccines:
Then, there are those in-between.
When looking at vaccination options, you firstly need to know the herd’s infectious disease status. Secondly, you need to know your client and his or her attitude to risk. If you know a certain problem exists on a farm that has been diagnosed, this is the place to begin. If you overwhelm your client with all the vaccination options under the sun, no vaccination at all will take place.
Consider which vaccinations are going to get the client the biggest gains and make a protocol for these first. Then begin to slot in others, in accordance with the annual management routine.
It is important vaccination choices are a joint decision between you and your client, and that, ultimately, the client’s decision is final. This way, he or she will buy into the idea and is more likely to be committed to making it work.
As dairy farms become larger and staff turnover seems to become greater, written protocols are relied on more. These protocols should be kept current and included in the HHP. As they are updated, they should be updated in the HHP.
Although the written HHP is not referred to on a regular basis, the included information is used daily; therefore, the HHP should be kept current.
If we know a disease is present on farm, we can work to contain it – this contrasts with keeping a disease out of a farm, which is where biosecurity comes in. This is discussed later in the article.
If we do not monitor for infectious disease, we are unlikely to know which diseases are causing the problems and, therefore, which control strategies are likely to have the best outcome. Vets should guide farmers in terms of what to test, how to test and how often to test.
Medicine storage has always been present in our HHP, but has rarely featured as particularly important to farmers. Recently, however, we have made it our business to ensure we discuss this at length.
For farmers who have already attended the MilkSure training course, much of this is light revision. For those who haven’t, it is an opportunity to suggest they should. Again, it should be more than a box-ticking exercise.
All prescription veterinary medicines have storage requirements that can be found on the data sheet. Most vaccines also require maintenance of the “cold chain” consistently between 2°C and 8°C, and have short shelf lives (usually hours) once bottles have been opened.
This is a chance to ensure farmers are getting the best out of the medicines and vaccines they are buying. This discussion can lead on to other areas, such as type and timing of administration, and needle hygiene. Panel 2 offers recommendations for improving the handling and storage of medicines.
Antibiotic usage and control of residues is another area where a surprising lack of knowledge has, historically, existed on both the vet and farmer’s parts. The MilkSure course has filled this gap.
We have often had an HHP meeting that has developed into discussion of bulk tank failures and the option of attending the MilkSure course – again, education for the farmer, fees opportunity for the vet and another way to build the vet-farmer relationship.
As a practice, a conscious effort was made some years ago to reduce sales of highest priority critically important antimicrobials. Today, all our clients have been weaned off these medicines, and we have worked hard to ensure they are aware of what antibiotics they are using and why they are using them.
Red Tractor and many milk buyers have a requirement for the previous 12 months’ antibiotic usage to be collated and made available as part of the HHP. We produce this list for our clients and discuss usage during our HHP meeting. Occasionally, areas of misunderstandings come to light and it is always a useful opportunity to re-ascertain that protocols are being correctly followed.
Biosecurity is the risk of disease entering a herd and must be high up the list of areas in which many farms can improve significantly. This becomes especially important in instances where disease is found to not be present.
If a herd is naive to – and unvaccinated for – infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, for example, buying in one infected animal could result in serious losses. Therefore, the farmer should be made aware of the risk he or she may be taking.
Biosecurity conjures up images of white suits, wellies and copious amounts of disinfectant. But it is so much more than this – and if a herd wants to keep a disease out, a plan should be made in terms of what lab tests to carry out to monitor the disease, and the protocol regarding the movement of animals on and off the farm.
This section will contain a summary review of the previous 12 months. Importantly, it will also contain future goals that have been decided as a team, plans for improvement and a timeline in which to do it. The Red Tractor guidelines include such requirements.
I try to remember the farmer will leave the office with great intentions, but, when his or her mobile phone rings to say a tractor has broken down, he or she will very quickly forget. Therefore, it is our job to maintain these goals in our heads and computer files, and gently remind farmers during our routine visits or quarterly catch-up meetings.
The idea is, when you have your next HHP meeting, you can review your goals and, hopefully, will have achieved at least some of them. This should encourage both parties to make new goals for next year.
The HHP meeting is a great chance to discuss burning health issues and why they may be occurring.
For example, if a farm has a long-standing calf pneumonia issue and vaccination has been employed, yet pneumonia is still an issue (this is very common), this is your chance to remind the farmer about the importance and relevance of managing the housing and airspace.
It is common for clients to rely wholly on a vaccination to fix a problem and assume, because they are vaccinating, they can fit 25 per cent more calves in their sheds.
After a trip to dairy farms in Denmark some years ago, I was struck by the general attitude of Danish dairy farmers. The attitude was “for the greater good” – all disease and lab results were recorded on a national database, and all farmers had access to all these results.
Although this isn’t the case in the UK, at the time, I remember thinking this would be unimaginable in Britain. The competitiveness of the UK dairy industry almost blows this concept out of the water.
However, in recent years, I can’t help but feel we are getting closer to this; we still have some way to go.
When conducting HHP meetings, it should be remembered the main aim of the meeting is not to sign a piece of paper farmers file away ready for their farm assurance audit. This is simply an added bonus.
The main aim is to engage with your clients, look at areas you can help them make gains for their businesses, and help them to implement them.
HHP possibly isn’t the best name for this document, because it must be more than just a “plan”. A desire must exist to achieve the goals set in this document, along with belief on both parts that it is possible.
Finally, a huge dose of enthusiasm is required to maintain momentum. Although we were not necessarily taught how to generate this in bucketloads, it will benefit us greatly if we are able to.
Do not allow clients to wait until the disease arrives to then manage it – help them to prevent it from entering in the first place.
