Welfare

Welfare Services set up and delivered by a local technician or veterinarian include:

Body Condition Score (BCS) – individual

Carrying out individual BCS of the herd at key points of the season. Allows assessment of feeding and can be used for targeted dry off.

BCS - Mob

Carry out an assessment of individual mobs of animals on-farm for ongoing monitoring of BCS trends throughout the season.

Tail scoring

Locomotion scoring 

Assessment of changes in the herd locomotion score for monitoring purposes or for the identification of lame animals for treatment

Annual ACVM consultation

Assessment of key indicators during the food safety consultation. This is required to flag any issues or concerns with areas of animal health that may require further investigation

Cooperative Difference Animal Welfare Plan

Minimal standard to satisfy the Co-operative difference “Animals” standard. WelFarm is the preferred option. A 30-minute consultation focusing on key metrics and producing an animal health plan

Healthy Hoof 

In cases of lameness in herds, where repeated locomotion scoring is failing to achieve meaningful change/results.

Transport Certification

An animal cannot be transported at all if:

1. They have any current injuries or signs of disease which may compromise their welfare during the journey and cause unreasonable or unnecessary pain during transport.
2. They have a healed injury and the animal knowingly did not receive treatment at the time for the injury.

One of our vets will be able to assess the animal to determine if transport is suitable. If they can determine that the animal’s welfare has not been and will not be compromised during the journey, then they can provide a veterinary certificate. This will be at the veterinarian’s discretion. An animal that is obviously sick or has wounds discharging large amounts of blood or pus will be unlikely to be certified.

If the animal is unable to be certified or transported, then the animal needs to begin a treatment plan, or the animal needs to be humanely slaughtered on the property as soon as practical.

WelFarm 

The WelFarm program combines other services detailed above into an overall package.

Includes:

• 1 whole herd BCS
• 3 mobs scores
• 1 whole herd locomotion score
• 1 whole herd tail score
• Assessment of drug usage.
• Farmer access to the WelFarm website with national and regional benchmarking.