Sheep Vet and Med Treatments
Sheep medical treatments maybe recorded against an individual animal, a list of animals, a group or a sheep flock, including untagged lambs.
Treatment records created for multiple animals include the total number of animals and the list of tag number, so you can easily create records just like writing them into your vet and med book.
The FarmIT 3000 software can replace your paper records.
Entry into the software
Medical treatments may be entered into the main software manually or recorded using farmit mobile software. The secret to most is having a list of tag numbers of the animals treated although you may select all animals or a group. All treatments will be include on the farm reports for medical and chemical treatments whether an individual tag number is record or not.
Typical Treatment Record
The treatment record includes all the information required of mandatory record keeping and a couple of extra bits to make it more useful when analysing the data. For example the 'Problem' (reason for treatment) , 'Operation' (treatment type) and 'Area Treated' for example 'left front foot'. A typical treatment looking like the one below. This is a treatment for 29 animals, although the list is not fully visible it is if you click the 'S' button.
Treatment are visible on the animals individual record card if the tag numbers are specified.
Recording Treatments
Individual Treatment
The simplest way to treat a one off individual is to find the animal and enter the treatment on the animals medical treatments tab. The treatment will be recorded using the individual tag number and thus linked to the animals record. Using the FarmIT Mobile software to do this in the field or shed is just as simple and means you can do it there and then rather than having to return to your pc.
Multiple Animal Treatment
Most treatments are recorded against a list of tag numbers, i.e the list of animals treated. You may select the animals from the animal selection screen, use a management group or list of tag reads from an EID reader. You may therefore construct your list in many ways, the animal selection screen making it very easy to select 'All Ewes', 'All Lambs' etc. However for more accuracy we would recommend treating a known group or even better a list of tags read using an EID reader or Weigh head. Treating 'all lambs' may include lost or missing animals where as a list of lambs read on the day will only include the lambs actually present on the day. Once record the treatment will be visible on every animal treated.
Flock Treatment
A flock treatment for any number of animals may be created using the flock record. Although animal tags are not recorded you may specify a temperary mark, for example 'Blue Spot'. These records will NOT show against an individual animal as there is NO tag reference.
Untagged Lambs
Untagged lambs may also be treated against the flock as above.
Operation and Types of Treatment
Prevention or Cure?
When analysing treatments and the usage of products it is very useful to distinuish between prevention and cure. For example we may use a product to prevent fly strike, we may also use a product to treat fly stike
Similarly we may want to know an animal was given a worm drench as a prevention to worms as opposed to a treatment because it had worms
You may select the operation as 'General Treatment' for treatment, or 'Preventative Treatment' for prevention. You can also do a physical treatment only where no actual product is used.