Herd health planning Part 1: Measuring - experiences of a 12-month project on Welsh dairy farms

摘要

Sixteen Welsh dairy farms received a series of health planning visits during 2007. This article is the first of three, aimed at exploring how to measure, manage and monitor health planning on-farm. This article is focused on the practical measures used to assess farm performance. This involves a combination of milk-recording data, farm records and clinical assessment. Information gathering on-farm is not always easy, as good accurate data is not always available. The subsequent articles will look athow the data was used to implement management changes and monitor success.