Farmers partaking in the knowledge transfer sheep programme must complete the animal health and management measure in year one of the programme. The targeted areas are:

This must be completed on the Department of Agriculture’s Animal Health Computer System (AHCS) with an approved knowledge transfer veterinary practitioner.

The computer system is currently not available, but vets can record the plan on paper and upload it at a later date. To draw up a plan, the vet should pay a visit to the farm to go through the main focus areas outlined above.

This should include reviewing any past issues on the farm along with the current health programme and management practices to ensure output is not negatively affected by health-related issues.

Kilkenny farmer and Irish Farmers Journal farmer writes contributor Brian Nicholson completed his health plan last week. He says the health plan is a good way for a farmer to focus the mind on a strategy to reduce the incidence of disease outbreak.

Dan O’Riordan from Spa View Vets in Johnstown, Co Kilkenny, who carried out Brian’s plan, says preventing illness can only be beneficial to a farmer’s enterprise. He said there should be no limit to raising the bar when it comes to animal health on every farm.

The animal health measure involves talking through the different areas of current production and outlining a plan. It should not be viewed as a box-ticking exercise for the programme, rather an opportunity to implement a robust health plan that will improve production efficiency and ultimately deliver to the farm’s margin.

Flock health and production

The first section the vet goes through in the plan is the current production on the farm. This involves laying out the main production stats and flock performance. It is broken down into five sections – ewe performance, scanning data, lambing performance, lamb care and lamb performance.

In terms of ewe performance, areas measured include total number of ewes on the farm, percentage of barren ewes, total number of abortions/stillbirths, total number of ewe deaths, total number of ewes culled annually, total number of ewes sold for further breeding.

In this section, the farmer and the vet have to agree a target for future years. Scanning data is also recorded, including a scanning percentage per ewe. Lambing performance is recorded, showing the start and end date for the lambing season and the number of lambings.

The lamb care section records the medicines used for young lambs and naval hygiene practised on the farm. The lamb performance section details the number of lambs weaned and sold annually and quantity of creep fed annually. Lamb mortality is also recorded. At the end of this section, the vet and farmer must agree priority actions to carry out on the farm to improve production performance.

Parasite control

The parasite control section outlines the dosing and parasite control strategy on the farm and possible ways to improve it. This section goes through the parasite control measures on the farm for lambs especially focused on the treatment of nematodirus battus. Pasture management is also detailed and the dosing procedure looks in particular at how to calculate how much dose to give a group of lambs. The quarantine procedure is looked at for bought-in sheep in respect of limiting the risk of outside parasites entering the flock. The plan also tries to reduce the incidence of unnecessary dosing, especially among mature breeding ewes, and looks for justification where all ewes are dosed in a flock. For liver fluke treatment, the vet will ask if there is a potential snail habitat on the farm or faecal testing for evidence of fluke. Again, after going through this section, the vet will draw up priority actions the farmer should put in place to control parasites on the farm.

Lameness

The third section outlines lameness incidence and control on the farm. The vet will ask the farmer what percentage of sheep are lame, including ewes, lambs and rams. The vet will clinically examine a sample of the lame sheep on the farm to allow a specific diagnosis. The vet will be looking out for virulent footrot, foot scald, contagious ovine digital dermatitis (CODD) and the less severe non-infectious white line disease (shelly hoof). After examining the lame sheep, he will plan with the farmer actions that can be taken to reduce the incidence of lameness in the flock and also prevent new causes of lameness entering the flock.

Biosecurity

The final section in the plan is bio-security. This section is split up into internal bio-security risks and external risks. For the internal risks, the vet will ask how lameness controls are carried out – is there a disinfectant footbath for sheep available and is the hoof knife disinfected after every sheep, for example. Lambing controls are also looked at. For example, how are afterbirths or dead lambs disposed of, are navels dipped or sprayed after birth, how often are lambing pens bedded and disinfected, etc. For the external bio-security risks, the vet will look at the replacement strategy of the farm. If replacements are bought into the flock, particular attention will be placed on the health status of the flock of origin, quarantine procedure, testing for diseases such as toxoplasmosis and sheep scab. The vet will also look at other possible disease access points to the flock, including on-farm visitors, manure spreading via contractor or bought-in manure and the maintenance of sheep fencing to prevent contact with neighbouring farms.

Other enterprises

While this week’s article focused on sheep, the same format is followed for the other enterprises of beef, dairy, poultry and pigs. Preparation is central to getting the most from the visit and, as such, it is useful to have some production information to hand to help paint a more accurate picture of the farm’s health profile.