14 Oct 2019
Ahead of her lecture to recent graduates at BCVA Congress with Lucy Jerram, Jenny Allan discusses why these plans are more than a box-ticking exercise, and how they help start discussions with farmers about animal welfare and disease.
Jenny Allan
Job Title
Image © goodluz / Adobe Stock
The phrase “herd health planning” often fills vets and farmers with dread, and can be seen as more endless paperwork and ticking boxes.
In the modern-day veterinary consultancy approach to herd health, a herd health plan (HHP) should be seen as a valuable tool and conversation starter for vets, rather than a file left on a shelf to be waved under an inspector’s nose.
A detailed HHP is now a basic requirement for nearly all farm assurance schemes in the UK. The Red Tractor scheme was established in 2000 and has its own HHP format – this is the most commonly used format for farm HHPs, with many veterinary practices personalising aspects, but still including the set sections.
Historically, only dairy farms needed a veterinary input to their HHP; however, since 2018, beef and sheep farms need a health, performance and antibiotic usage review. This will allow vets with these farms “under their care” more access to records and data, to review medicine usage and start to have more input on farms previously unreachable.
This article focuses on the Red Tractor requirements, which set the basic standards across the majority of UK farms. With supermarket contracts setting more targets and requirements for themselves, these often go above and beyond the Red Tractor standards.
It is important to be aware of individual farm contracts when conducting an annual review, as they can change relatively frequently. Red Tractor standards cover animal welfare, food safety, traceability and environmental protection1,2. The HHP falls under the animal welfare section, but overlaps partly with food safety in regards to medicine usage and accurate record-keeping.
An HHP has several sections, with the first main section containing all the details about the farm, staff, and details of management protocols, procedures and drugs used on farm.
This section includes biosecurity policy, infectious disease protocols, vaccinations, parasite control, youngstock management, euthanasia, TB reactors, broken needle policy, transport and casualty slaughter policy. These are universal to beef, sheep and dairy systems3.
Dairy HHPs also contain information on lameness treatment, mastitis, drying-off procedures, metabolic disorders, down cow policy and identifying treated animals4.
The aim of the first section is to have a working document individual to that farm, detailing all procedures and drugs used. Vets do not have to write this section; farmers are allowed to fill this out themselves, although it is advised vets at least review it as part of the annual health review.
Ideally, this section is seen as a working document and updated regularly in line with the farm’s named vet, if any drugs or protocols should change. Laminated, easy-to-follow posters have been used successfully when put on display for all farm staff, ensuring consistent treatment of animals and record-keeping, and is crucial on larger-scale farms.
The second section is a herd health performance review, which contains both compulsory and recommended sections. Vets or farmers can complete this section; however, if farmers do it, vets have to review the figures before signing the document.
The compulsory section includes lameness, mastitis, culling rate and reasons, involuntary cull rate (death or emergency euthanasia), and calf mortality at 0 to 24 hours and 24 hours to 42 days. This is the same for both dairy and beef farms5,6.
The recommended section for dairy farms has many more parameters – including mobility scoring; fertility parameters, including days to first service; conception rate; calving interval; average milk yield; and bulk somatic cell count.
The information required for these sections should be readily available on most dairy farms with on-farm software data systems; however, these rely on farmers inputting the data accurately – something that is still widely variable on UK farms.
The final section is the veterinary review – the section the vet signs to say he or she has reviewed the HHP and the data provided.
This section also states vets have inspected all of the livestock on the farm; TB testing is often a good opportunity to do this. However, with the increase in practices employing TB testers who are not the named vet for that farm, inspection of animals needs to be done at an independent visit.
Most importantly, this section is where three key areas that could be improved – or are falling below the standards required – are decided. This section also allows a time frame they need to be improved by.
This is, arguably, the most important section for veterinary input and where the HHP can be a useful tool. It is important to make these suggestions practical and affordable for the farm, and review them regularly.
Since June 2018, a mandatory antibiotic review section exists7,8 – this is applicable to dairy, beef and sheep plans.
Reducing antibiotic use in livestock is part of the Government’s long-term plan to tackle antibiotic resistance, so it is now a key component to the HHP. This section has to be completed by the farm’s vet.
To start, an annual review of antibiotics used is completed. This is allowed to be completed with either sales or medicine records data; often, sales data is more reliable. However, it is important to note medicine records are also mandatory in all systems and animal health officers have a legal right to inspect these records at any time; therefore, they should be up to date.
The University of Nottingham antibiotic calculator – readily available from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board9 – is a valuable tool to enable vets to calculate the mg/kg of antibiotic used (the recognised metric for the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance targets), or defined daily doses and defined course dose per animal. This will highlight high-usage drugs or areas – for example, youngstock – enabling conversations that can evolve into preventive medicine protocols being adopted.
Aims for reduction of antibiotic use in identified high-usage areas are also set alongside the other three suggestions made in the final veterinary review HHP section.
It is important to note the additional standards set out by Red Tractor since June 2018: farmers are no longer allowed to use third-generation and fourth-generation cephalosporins, and the group fluoroquinolones – these are now only allowed to be used when prescribed by the vet in extreme circumstances, based on culture and sensitivity results.
These drugs are not allowed to be dispensed by receptionists or dispensary workers.
Ideally, a list of drugs a farm is allowed to be dispensed should be drawn up for every farm, based on an HHP written by their designated vet, including any other considerations – for example, milk contract rules. This is a system already being used in many practices across the country.
Arguably, for beef and sheep units that, historically, did not have to see a vet to write their HHP, this is the biggest change. This will, inevitably, help vets in the field to have a starting point on farms that would have, otherwise, seen them for an annual TB test – or the odd calving or lambing – and to help start more herd or flock health-focused conversations.
Medicine use and administration is part of the first section. In dairy, beef and sheep systems, it is recommended at least one staff member has been trained on administering medicines to animals and on the safe use of medicines, including record-keeping, storage, sharps use and disposal.
For dairy systems, most milk contracts require staff to attend registered courses, usually run by vet practices – such as safe use of medicines or MilkSure courses – with certificates as proof of attendance.
This standard of enforcing proper training is due to the fact farmers are allowed to administer drugs – such as vaccines, anthelmintics and antibiotics – without direct consultation of a vet for each case. However, the choice of drugs used should be governed by a protocol set out in the HHP prescribed by the vet and reviewed regularly.
It is important to remember the actual dosing and administration is done by the farmer, and as it is known this is often inaccurate10; therefore, it is important to explain dosing, timings and storage of any new drugs prescribed.
Overall, vets should be seeing HHPs as a critical way to conduct a whole farm review focusing on animal welfare and disease, rather than another box-ticking exercise.
Vets need to see it as an effective way to engage with farmers in herd health discussions, use the data and antibiotic sections as a crucial insight of information to be able to benchmark farms against each other, and individually measure effects of changes put in place over time.
