A farm animal health plan is an active management tool aimed at promoting the health and welfare of farm animals by setting out disease prevention, detection and management procedures. It should be based on farm specific issues and at its most basic, it should ensure that illness, injury and mortality amongst farmed animals are at minimum levels. More progressively, it should also be seen as providing procedures that promote positive health and welfare.
Most farm and health plans start by listing some key details about your farm, such as the farm address and key farm personnel and other important farm contacts such as the farm vet and feed suppliers. Also details about your stock, such as numbers, breeds, and age of your herd or flock.
Record keeping and monitoring
In order to effectively reduce both disease and medicine use, it is necessary to understand what the current levels are, and therefore a disease recording and monitoring system needs to be in place. An animal health plan can only be fully operational once the disease recording and monitoring systems has been implemented. The information from these systems allows an accurate analysis of medicine use and the herd or flock status and a plan can be designed taking into account the specific features of each farm. It is important that a local vet is involved in health planning to ensure good understanding of the local disease situation.
Herd Health Security
A herd health security plan highlights all of the likely risk factors concerning the introduction of contagious diseases from outside the herd. Farmers should be aware of which diseases are in the local area and what the risk factors of importing them onto the farm are. Risks can be broadly classed into those concerning:nThe introduction of new or returning animals, Contact with other animals via shared resources with other farms and animals, such as shared grazing, water courses and Introducing disease via humans or equipment entering a farm.
A genuine closed herd/flock is one where no animals are brought in even on a temporary basis (e.g., a rented bull). If breeding animals are likely to be bought occasionally, a biosecurity policy for such occasions should be established identifying the quarantine and isolation measure for sick and bought-in stock.
Vaccinations in Health Planning
The animal health plan should list the currently used vaccines and immunization procedures and the reasons for each vaccine use. If it is intended to reduce the vaccine usage on the farm, a clear plan of action should be established. This plan should take into consideration the local risk factors and include alternatives to immunological protection (herd health security, eradication/monitoring plan etc.).
Promoting positive health and natural behaviour
A health plan that incorporates the “positive health” approach would need to concentrate on health rather than disease diagnosis, identification of risk factors and disease avoidance. Definitions of health, as applied to human health encompass physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Health planning has been described as an effort to promote the general health of the individual or the herd by actively improving it living conditions in two ways:
- Through breeding to select animals well suited to individual farm conditions
- Through the provision of access to species-specific feed, housing and the freedom to express natural behaviour
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