Financial benefits central for flock health planning uptake

There is no doubting the positive influence health planning can have on a production system, yet progress in this area typically proves challenging. Common practices on many farms still centre on a ‘fire brigade’ approach, where significant health risks are only addressed following a disease outbreak.

Health plans cannot eliminate all risks, but losses in animal performance or mortality related to disease or suboptimum management practices could in many cases be avoided by a preventative approach.

At the recent Teagasc Hill Sheep Conference, Jason Barley from the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), highlighted recent work funded by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) and undertaken by AFBI and AgriSearch on providing lessons on how health planning can be better adopted at farm level.

Jason outlined that once farmers started to see the cash benefits of the process, the level of buy in increased majorly.

He said that originally, flock health planning focused just on disease prevention, rather than the production benefits. This has now changed, with the contribution of health planning to the improved financial position of the enterprise now seen as very important.

In addition, health planning is now viewed as an integral component of the proactive approach required to comply with current EU and UK animal health and welfare strategies. It is also a fundamental part of national and international antimicrobial resistance strategies.

Balanced approach

Flock health and production plans can take many forms, varying from very simple to very complex. Jason says that in general, plans at either end of the spectrum are of questionable practical use. He says that all plans should be based around routine involvement with the flock and that plans should be fluid and updated as necessary.

The important timeframes identified for addressing in a plan include weaning, flushing, mating, pregnancy, lambing, rearing and subsequent weanings.

Where visits are due to take place from your vet, then weaning, pre-lambing and rearing/lactation are seen as the most beneficial, with the potential to combine rearing and weaning in to one visit.

There are several components of a good planning process, summarised as follows.

1 Flock audit

A flock audit should establish the baselines for the production system. This will be influenced by the limitations of the recording system in place. A good place to start is to establish the status quo for the flock, as this will allow current and future management to be compared.

2 Recording system

The saying ‘you can’t improve what you don’t measure’ comes to mind here. Sufficient records must be collected to allow the health and production interventions put in place to be monitored and analysed.

3 Flock objectives

The objectives or desired goals for a flock/herd, will vary significantly. Examples of common objectives originating from the Northern Ireland project include a reduction of abortion and neonatal lamb losses, reduction in lameness/anthelmintic use, proper and effective treatment of sheep scab including the control of mites resistant to some common injectable treatments, lower incidence of mastitis, reduction or removal of specific diseases from the flock (e.g OPA, Johne’s disease) and an improvement in grassland management.

4 Agreed interventions

In many instances, there may be more objectives identified than are possible to address in the short-term. Interventions should be agreed and prioritised, with plans generally working best where objectives are spaced out over a number of years, rather than biting off more than you can chew in one year.

5 Regular reviewing

Regular monitoring is essential to track progress and assess if the plans put in place are effective. Progress can be assessed relative to flock targets, but the experience of the Northern Ireland project also shows that it is useful to benchmark progress against similar flocks where this option is available. This will broaden the review process and give greater insight into areas where progress may not be as rapid as envisaged.

As touched on already, including an analysis of the cost benefit, is a desirable function of the review process, as it will give a financial appraisal of the benefits of implementing change.

6 Adjust if necessary

A good plan should be fluid and be applicable to change. Adjustments may be required for a number of reasons, some of which are often outside of your control, e.g weather events. Veterinary input or the main components of the plan may need to be modified.

The exact components of a flock health and production plan will also differ between farms, but Jason says that there are a number of components which should be included in all plans.

Flock health and preventative medicines

The role of vaccination is essential in reducing the risk of disease establishing and spreading. Common examples include abortion-causing agents, clostridial diseases, pasteurellosis, orf and louping ill. In terms of anti-parasitic medicines, best practice principles should be adopted (e.g SCOPS, One Health etc). Trace elements and vitamins are also of great concern for some farms and these are best utilised where there is a demonstrated need.

Routine treatments/considerations

Plans should also have protocols or policies for key areas that can have a big impact on health and performance. For example, a current consideration in flocks is colostrum management, ranging from aspects such as late gestation feeding programmes to feeding practices for newborn lambs.

Other significant areas are lameness/mastitis control programmes and quarantine protocols.

Monitoring

Monitoring the prevalence of issues and investigating unknown causes of illness or poor performance are important. Faecal egg count monitoring is a good example, as is trace element profiling of sheep at key timeframes and post-mortem analysis to determine the cause of mortality.

Management

Jason says that a full management component for a health and production plan is optional. It is often a better approach to have such plans developed by, or have input from, advisers and sheep technologists (CAFRE, Teagasc etc) covering areas such as breeding and replacement policy, nutrition, grazing management and marketing plans. Even where this is in place, the health and production plan should still include written procedures for quarantine, general and specific biosecurity, culling policy and scanning.