UGCN in practiceDairy farmers consider their private practitioner as their most important source of knowledge on udder health and as their first contact person in case of udder health problems. That, added to the fact that in the Netherlands a private practitioner visits clients at least four times each year, made UGCN decide to chose for this group as the main focus for communication to dairy farmers. Additionally other means are used, such as the internet, (electronic) news letters, lectures, articles in farmers journals, and ‘open door days’ in example herds. The practitioners, however, were in the centre of the activities.
In 2005 ten practices were asked to step in the project and help try to improve udder health as much as they could in the 1500 dairy farms they were serving all together. In 2007 there are over 300 study groups with more than 3000 active dairy farmers. Individual approach After the kick-off the practitioners started to approach individual farmers. They were supported by several tools developed by UGCN, helping them to visualize the possible gain in this field. This part of the work was done during regular herd health or ambulatory visits or during health checks (PBB: periodic herd visits). Subjects included proper registration of clinical mastitis cases, filling in herd level treatment schedules, improving resistance management, teat end scoring, hygiene scoring, and so on. Study groups It was found very efficient and effective to bring together groups of farmers to discuss udder health related subjects. Study groups of 8 to 10 dairy farmers got together at the farm of one of the participants. Subjects discussed were part of the UGCN five-pointplan: It Pays To Reduce Mastitis: Infectious pressure, Planning and goalsetting, Treatment, Resistance and Milking and milking-machine. In these study groups it was tried to summarize existing knowledge and to add recent findings. An important part of the meetings, however, was also the visit of the barn and the cows, discussing the management of the host and exchange of experiences of the participants. |