18 Sept 2023
With times hard for many, including farmers, every penny counts. But while persuading sheep keepers of the benefits of vaccination should may be challenging on occasions, various approaches can help in the discussions, including use of health planning, cost calculators and farmer meetings, says Davinia Hinde BVetMed, CertAVP(Sheep), MSc, MRCVS.
Davinia Hinde
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Engaging with sheep farmers for them to increase the vaccinations of flocks can be challenging at times – especially in years when it has been difficult to obtain vaccines that are being used by the farm and deemed as necessary.
Financial constraints would often be the most common reason for the challenges that are met when trying to engage clients. It’s relatively easy to demonstrate a cost benefit to a client for a disease they have had an outbreak of on farm. An example would be using enzootic abortion vaccine after suffering an abortion outbreak due to this organism as the cost benefit can clearly be demonstrated and they can see a clear benefit from doing the vaccinations.
However, it has sometimes become the common trend for clients to stop using certain vaccines (such as clostridial vaccine) after years of not seeing the disease or if they were unable to obtain the vaccine and didn’t suffer any consequences from not doing them.
Cost calculators can be beneficial and will indicate to farmers the degree of disease prevalence on their farm to make vaccination financially beneficial. For example, the degree of prevalence of footrot present on a farm to make Footvax “pay for itself” could be demonstrated.
Health planning is a great tool to both engage with clients and demonstrate benefits of preventive vaccinations. Actually getting farmers to record data at this time – such as abortion rates, barren rates, cull rates, lameness rates and pneumonia data – can be incredibly useful. This then allows the vet to review the data and benchmark against targets for the farm and general industry targets for similar farms.
Sometimes people can perceive a level of disease as normal and this helps engage them and lead them to obtain the help where needed.
Farmer meetings can also be particularly useful at engaging farmers and improving the take-up rates of vaccinations, as sometimes clients can be unaware of the availability of a vaccine and the potential benefits that the vaccine can provide.
For example, the HIPRA mastitis vaccine, Vimco, has helped reduce recurring mastitis caused by Staphylococcus aureus in some flocks, but certainly until we made clients aware that the product was available, in our practice a lack of awareness existed about its availability.
Discussing the potential benefits and pitfalls of the vaccines in a meeting setting can certainly improve engagement and, therefore, vaccine take-up.
In a similar vein, articles and adverts in a publication aimed at the farming community can trigger discussion and engagement between farmers and vets.
At this point, a vet can discuss with the farmer as to the applicability of a particular vaccine on farm. For example, the Johne’s disease vaccine Gudair (Virbac) may be applicable on farms with Johne’s disease, but not applicable on others.
Having SQPs as part of the practice team can also improve engagement, as they can discuss and prescribe POM-VPS products, such as for clostridial disease.
Having advice come from a source other than the vet can help improve with the engagement.
Of course, one of the best ways to get farmers to engage with any product or process is to have a neighbouring farmer tell them about a product. This can often be the best way to engage clients and allow them to discuss vaccination further with their vet.
After all, if it worked for their neighbour, it’s likely to work for them and improve things.
