Take a walk around the yard and assess whether you would pass a cross-compliance check. Having adequate storage and cattle identification were the two most common areas for penalties in 2016.

If yards are dirty, this water needs to be collected. If in doubt, contact your adviser to do an assessment.

Do a quick check on cards for all animals and check that they are on the herd register. Below are the most common penalties.

Water protection: inspectors found farms with inadequate collection of livestock manure, other organic fertilisers, soiled water or silage effluent, failure to minimise soiled water and structural defects in storage facilities leading to direct or indirect runoff to groundwater or surface water.

Cattle identification: the majority of problems in this area were related to tagging irregularities such as animals missing tags, animals not tagged within 20 days of birth or animals missing both ear tags. Inspectors also found that farmers had failed to notify movements, births and deaths to the database within seven days, and passport discrepancies such as no passports for purchased animals, missing passports and surplus passports.

Beef management: fat scores for finishing cattle

Beef management: ensuring water supply isn't interrupted

Beef management: cross compliance checks

This week Adam Woods takes a look at ensuring water supply isn't interrupted, marketing cattle at the correct fat score and what to look out for in a cross compliance check.