A Manual method for the assessment of health and fertility performance in commercial dairy herds

Abstract

During the last 5 years, an on-going research project has been monitoring the uptake of dairy herd health schemes by both farmers and veterinarians. This work concentrated on all the elements that will affect the success of the herd health scheme, rather than just looking at the recording part of the scheme. The element that appeared to be causing the veterinarians the most trouble was the problem of farmer motivation, particularly in the form of “they don’t think they have sufficient problems to justify the joining of a herd health scheme.” With this problem in mind, a pilot method was developed for the veterinarian to quickly appraise a client farmer’s herd by using easily accessible information from a sample of 20 randomly selected cows in the herd. Ten indices were used in the first part of the analysis, examining physical aspects of health and fertility performance of the herd. Six were then taken to give an assessment of the financial losses occurring on the farm and help identify in which areas there is most room for improvement. The technique was tested on a sample of 52 veterinarians attending a conference who were asked to analyse several problem farms. The participants then completed a feedback questionnaire on the usefulness of such an approach to farm analysis, and most importantly, its usefulness in the adoption of the herd health scheme by the farmer. Ninety one percent of the respondents identified the method as a useful aid to the introduction of a computerised herd health scheme.