Developing an animal health plan for an organic farm

Healthy animals are the cornerstone of any successful organic beef farming enterprise. On Kay O’Sullivan’s Future Beef farm in Co. Cork, an animal health plan was developed to achieve just that, Future Beef Programme Advisor, James Mullane fills us in on what it entails.

Farming 63.2ha organically, including 11.2ha of forestry, Kay O’Sullivan places a huge emphasis on disease prevention through her animal health plan. She operates a closed herd, which lowers to risk of disease being brought onto the farm, and she breeds animals suitable to the farm system – that go in calf, calve unassisted, produce enough milk to rear the calf and have good vitality.

Kay runs a spring-calving suckler to store beef system, along with a lowland ewe system. The suckler herd comprises of 28 spring-calving cows and the ewe flock contains 50 ewes. The cows are all bred to 100% AI using pedigree AI sires. All male progeny are finished off redstart and red clover silage on the farm, and surplus heifers are sold as maiden heifers to repeat customers for breeding.

Prevention

Coupled with her breeding policy, Kay practices good animal husbandry. This encourages strong resistance to disease and the prevention of infections. Kay’s cattle are reared on a 100% grass/forage based system, and cattle are grazed at a more extensive stocking rate in order to reduce stress.

Despite best efforts, animals can become sick/injured. One of the main aims of organic farming is to develop healthy livestock with as little use of veterinary medicines as possible. An animal health plan aims to reduce disease by preventative management, therefore reducing the need for routine medicines. Vaccination is permitted in cases where there is a known risk.

During the process of converting to organic, an animal health plan was drawn up in consultation with her vet. This plan specified any animal health issues on the farm at the time and how Kay would tackle these issues into the future while conforming to the requirements of organic certification standards.

The animal health plan

The animal health plan helps Kay reduce – in both a planned and careful way – the level of medicine used. Kay can still use the appropriate veterinary treatment, although with longer withdrawal times, in order to prevent animals suffering. However, the plan allows Kay to examine where she can prevent the need for such treatments in the future. This is very important as the organic standards allow only a certain number of treatments before an animal loses its organic status. This highlights the need to develop a health plan to reduce the use of treatments without increasing the risk of animals suffering or loss of organic status. The animal health plan ultimately needs to address issues such as:

1. What diseases are currently issues on the farm.
2. How can these be controlled or prevented.
3. What modifications can be made at farm level to reduce the risk of disease.

Kay uses faecal testing in order to identify the level and type of internal parasites within the herd. This is carried out on a routine basis during the grazing season.

Keeping the herd health plan up to date is an on-going process. Whenever an animal needs treating, you must treat it but do think about what could be done to avoid having to treat again in the future. The animal health plan is not just a piece of paper for the organic certifying body, Kay assesses her herd health on an annual basis with her Veterinary surgeon and will implement any changes to the plan for improvements, if necessary. Writing the plan is an ongoing process, for example if an animal is sick, you must treat it but try to think what could be done to avoid having to treat again in the future. The plan should be kept on the farm and available for anyone working with animals on the farm

Steps to developing an animal herd health plan:

1. It is recommended that the animal herd health plan is drawn up by the vet.
2. Identify the disease organism or health problem
3. Learn about the organism’s life cycle and/or health problem.
4. Identify the current veterinary or other treatments used.
5. Think about management/husbandry practices that could be used to break the organism’s lifecycle or improve the animal’s health whilst reducing reliance on veterinary treatments.
6. Identify management/husbandry practices that could be used to minimise or reduce the problem.
7. Identify in advance the alternative veterinary medicines that can be used should the management practices not be successful.
8. Identify the specified withdrawal periods for the treatments and calculate the longer withdrawal periods required for organic management.

Table 1: Kay O’Sullivan’s animal health plan

Upcoming event

Kay O’Sullivan will host a Future Beef Programme farm walk on Friday, July 25 at 6pm in Mourneabbey, Mallow, Co. Cork, Eircode P51 Y62D. Kay’s animal health strategy will be discussed in detail on the night. For more information on Kay O’Sullivan’s Future Beef Farm Walk, visit here.

For more information, Kay O’Sullivan provided an overview of her farming system as part of this week’s Beef Edge podcast. Listen in below: