Impact of Veterinary Herd Health Management on German Dairy Farms

Abstract

Veterinary Herd Health Management (VHHM) is becoming increasingly important in the field of veterinary dairy practice. Whereas a few decades ago veterinarians had mainly purely curative tasks, these are now complemented by advisory activities and thus regular collaboration between veterinarian and farmer is an important tool in the full support of a dairy farm. Keeping the animals healthy and optimizing farm performance while maintaining animal health, animal welfare and legal aspects are the focus of herd health programs, not only to ensure food safety. For this purpose, animal-related data are collected, both problem-oriented but especially preventive, which are discussed with the persons that care for the animals. The resulting operational objectives are addressed consecutively by measures within the framework of the program and reviewed by means of interval-based evaluation. With the EU-wide "Animal Health Act" (VO 2016/429) which is in effect since April 2021, a VHHM is mandatory on dairy cow farms. The topic of VHHM is of multi-faceted interest for the stakeholders involved. To the veterinary profession, a deeper insight can serve to better promote farm-specific approaches, but also to recruit farms not previously participating in VHHM in order to proactively market VHHM as a veterinary service. For the dairy farmers, a broader horizon of possibilities within the framework of VHHM can help them to position their individual situation and, if necessary, achieve progress or change with the farm veterinarian. Not least is public interest given through the change in law, but also from the consumer’s point of view, since the production of high-quality and safe food is demanded more and more with emphasis on animal welfare and animal health, on which the veterinarian could influence actively by means of VHHM. Until now, little is known about the establishment of VHHM programs on dairy farms in Germany, so the aim of this study was to collect a status quo of the current VHHM practice. An online survey was used to address dairy farmers and to record whether VHHM was taking place and, if so, the extent to which it was being implemented. Dairy farmers were asked about satisfaction with the veterinarian as well as problems and desires within the VHHM program, with the intent of providing a reflection of the nationwide dissemination. The hypothesis of the first part of the study was that farms that participated in a VHHM were more satisfied with the veterinarian and with the VHHM program itself. It was also to find out if the scope of support was related to the satisfaction of a corresponding program. The second part of the project analyzed whether closer and more regular collaboration was potentially associated with improved overall farm performance such as milk yield, age at first calving, bulk tank somatic cell count etc.