Small Ruminants: Flock Health Planning and Biosecurity Flashcards
What are the advantages for flock health plans
Farmer
* requirment of farm assurance schemes
* Defra welfare codes require written plan
* Opportunity to reflect and improve on flock performance and health and welfare issues
* Up to date advice- parasites, new products, ABs
* Calendar
Vet- relationships, new business
Public/Government- improved welfare, improves public health, check legal compliance medicines
What is included in flock health planning
- KPIs
- Fertility
- Nutrition
- Lambing managment
- Endo/ecto parasites
- Vaccinations
- Farm specific disease issues
- Biosecurity
- Welfare practices
What are examples of planned flock health visits?
Pre-tupping- weaning- summer time
Pre-lambing- winter
What are the limitations of health planning?
Can’t fix everything at once
Based on limited information
Disease situations don’t change
Up to date
What records are needed?
Electronic data/ paper records
Medicine records
Dates/times and current treatments antibiotics wormers and vaccinations
Mortality data
Production figures
Disease outbreaks
What are the different KPIs for Sheep flocks?
Scanning %
Lambing %- born alive, 1 week, weaned, sold
Lamb mortality- scanning to birth (6%), birth to turn out (6%), turn out to sale (2%), overall birth to sale (8%)
Lamb growth rates 0.2kg/day
Ewe mortality (1-3%)
Replacement rate (20-25%)
Ewe: Tup ratio 40:1
How do we use KPIs?
Industry benchmarking
Farmers own goals
Think about low figures, potentially investigate
Approximate cost benefit
What can cause low scanning %?
What can be done?
- Season
- Infectious infertility- toxoplasmosis, border disease
- Ewe- BCS, Age, Disease
- Rams- age, disease, numbers, fertility
- History of tupping managment
- Clinicsl examine the sheep
- PM
- Fertility test tups
- Investigate infecitous abortion
What fertility KPIs can be taken into account?
Rams- number, genetics, health and MOT, fertility testing
Ewes- Aids, Ewe selection/genetics/health, BCS
Tupping managment and timings
Infectious infertility- vaccinations, monitoring
What can be used for nutrition KPIs?
Body condition score and targets
Lamb growth and targets
Feed plan
Grassland managment
Peri-parturient nutrition
What should be included in lambing managment KPIs?
Dystocia managment policy
Hygiene- pens, feeding equipment, lambing equipment
Prolapse policy
Abortions
Colostrum policy
Tail docking and castration
Vaccinations
Policy for prevention and treatment of lamb diseases (Orf, joint ill, watery mouth, coccidiosis)
What should be covered in a flock health plan for endo/ecto control?
Encourage responsible use of anthelmintics
Complex area
Lots of oppertunities to improve
Discuss SCOPS principles
Encourage and explain use of targeted anthelmintic use
Testing for wormer resistance
What should be reviewed with vaccines in a health flock plan?
- Timings
- Regimes
- Handling/storage
- Products
- Additional vaccines
- Vaccination techniques
- MSD master class videos
For the following months what happens for sheep?
July, August, September, January, February, March, April
What biosecurity principles should be used in a herd health flock plan?
- Not possible to have zero risk
- Type of business and aims of the farm clearly discussed
- Identify which disease the flock is at risk from
- Identify current flock disease status
- Assess the risk of disease introduction
- Quantify that risk
- Devise control measures to reduce risk
