Gerard Lynch, a dairy farmer in County Cavan, offers a bureau service to help a farmer prepare for Bord Bia inspections. He uses AgriNet HerdApp for all inspections.
Gerard calls to the farm and gathers information and photos that the Bord Bia inspector will need to see. He collects the drug purchases from the vet and enters all drug administrations into HerdApp to prepare for Bord Bia inspections.
Furthermore, he creates a herd health plan in HerdApp and takes screenshots from HerdApp for the inspector.
This means that the farmer is now set up and up-to-date on HerdApp. These can easily continue building a database of information of their herd using the farm app.
“The frustrating thing about AgriNet HerdApp is that it is underutilised a lot of time,” he commented.
According to Lynch, the wealth of information a farmer can build on HerdApp is phenomenal.
As well as enabling Gerard’s clients to pass inspections, for a small annual fee, by using HerdApp, farmers get a service that outlines breeding information, herd health plans, sire advice and fertility performance.
This means having all of this information readily available in one place for daily decisions, for the vet, for an advisor, for accounts and for inspections.
Data recording
Gerard recommends Teagasc advisors to be familiar with the HerdApp, so that they can analyse a farmer’s herd and bounce ideas off one another to make breeding decisions using accurate and in-depth information.
EBI reports, milk recording reports, sire advice, and herd health plans are all accessible on HerdApp to help make the best decisions going forward.
Beef and sheep farmers can utilise HerdApp for compliance. As well as this, beef farmers can record weights, set targets and calculate the average daily gain.
This simple technology can be used to see the herd’s progress or an individual cow year-on-year and push boundaries.
“As farmers, this is the way we have to go to; we will have less access to drugs to solve these problems in the future.”
Using HerdApp to collect data gives you better insights to help you optimise your herd.
Selective dry cow therapy
With new regulations being implemented in 2022 for selective dry cow therapy, farmers’ herd health plans and milk recording reports are helping farmers be proactive rather than reactive and, in essence, save time and money while producing a superior product.
Contact
For more information, contact: [email protected] or: 087 271 0598.
Alternatively, you can read about Ciara Byers’ experience here and Linda Cliffe experience here.
