Planning helps farmers and animals keep safe

Whenever you are working with stock, the potential is there for safety to be compromised. The cause can be equipment or facilities that are not up to scratch or flawed decisions resulting from poor technique, tiredness or underlying mental health issues.

If you find yourself in such a situation, stop and ask yourself, “If I continue doing this job the way I am, will I be safe from physical harm and will my stock avoid injury?” If you answer no, making some safety adjustments could mean you avoid becoming another of New Zealand’s workplace injury statistics because you lost a finger after injecting yourself and not the animal, or your arm was broken after being crushed or horned in the stock race while drenching. In 2020 a Southland man was killed by a stag within days of saying it had to be culled as a safety risk. Administering animal health products such as drenches and vaccinations is one such situation. It is essential that these treatments are given in a way that ensures the safety and wellbeing of the person administering the product and of the animals. Creating an animal health plan will help. You will then know well in advance when and what product needs to be given to which animals. This includes scheduling some faecal egg counts on vulnerable stock before drenching, testing some animals for trace minerals or getting a soil sample analysed to help inform your fertiliser decisions. Planning and preparing everything in advance saves time, money and energy. Well beforehand, ensure all necessary resources and equipment are checked and working properly, any infrastructure is in a fit state for use, all gates are secured, all team members are trained on how to do the job and that when using vaccines you have enough coolie bags and frozen ice packs. An ice pack sitting in the cupboard is not frozen! Check you have adequate equipment supplies including cradles, weighing equipment and sterilised needles for vaccinations. Check that all vaccinator or drench guns are calibrated to deliver the correct dose safely to the right group of animals.

For further information, contact your Farmlands Technical Field Officer or the friendly team at your local Farmlands store.

Article supplied by Tiffany Menzies, Farmlands Nutrition Technical Manager

| Preparing everything in advance saves time, money and energy.

DON’T FORGET…

• For everyone’s safety, implement and always follow farm biosecurity measures. • Make sure you have enough supplies on hand or order well ahead so you have the product you need when you need it. It’s no fun running out of Multine 5-in-1 while vaccinating a mob of lambs in a remote location. • Study the product label for withholding times. Avoid missdosing any animals as this can result in ill health or toxicity problems. For worm drenching, best practice is to weigh and sort stock by size to ensure you give the correct dose and limit drench resistance. • Check the weather forecast to avoid putting stress on livestock that could lead to health problems.