A lot of useful information is available through the ICBF website, including information and programme data for your herd from various AHI programmes.
These include CellCheck, BVD, Johne’s Disease, Beef HealthCheck and Pig HealthCheck.
In this news article, Michelle McGrath, CellCheck Assistant Programme Manager, tells our readers more.
For those of you who may not be frequent users of technology, rest assured this data is surprisingly easy to access on ICBF.
To assist you with accessing your AHI programme data, we have several useful guides and videos on our website explaining how to access this data on ICBF.
To gain access to the dashboards, log in to your ICBF account using your username, which is your herd number or a unique Identifier and your password.
If you have forgotten your password, contact ICBF by either email to – quer[email protected] – or by phone at 023 882 0452 [9 am – 5.30 pm].
Once you have logged in to the ICBF website, you will see a menu bar running along the top of the screen.
To access the various dashboards, select ‘SERVICES’ then select ‘AHI animal health’ from the dropdown menu.
Here, you will see the various AHI programmes that are available.
Beginning with the Beef HealthCheck dashboard, this dashboard has summary graphs of both liver and lung scores from all cattle slaughtered from your herd in the current year.
Individual animal information is also available. Where evidence of liver or lung damage is found, you are advised to contact your veterinary practitioner to discuss future parasite control plans.
The CellCheck Dashboard is a relatively new dashboard that displays milk recording information similar to the reports that herdowners receive after each milk recording.
One advantage of the dashboard is that it is interactive and allows the farmer to look back in time at records which helps develop a better understanding of the history of SCC in the herd.
As with the other dashboards, the herdowner must give authorisation to allow others, including farm advisors, veterinary practitioners, and co-op advisors, to access the information.
The Johne’s disease dashboard allows herdowners who are registered in the Irish Johne’s Control Programme (IJCP) to view and manage their yearly activities.
The Johne’s disease screen presents all your current herd information in relation to Johne’s disease testing and Veterinary Risk Assessment Management Plans (VRAMPs) and a herd report which summarises the history of your activities in the programme.
This information is vital for monitoring and planning the programme activities, while the test results for all animals tested will assist you in the management and control of the disease in your herd.
The BVD dashboard provides access to all your BVD test results, including a summary of the entire herd by status and an archive of all letters issued over the course of the BVD eradication programme.
The BVD dashboard also provides you with a series of additional options. These are particularly useful for herd investigations that are carried out by a veterinary practitioner, following BVD positive test results.
They include purchase history, contiguous herds (details of the total number of herds which the infected herd shared a common boundary with), and an investigate function (useful to determine when infection occurs).
In the near future, it will also be possible to obtain information on neighbouring herds (up to 400m) that have positive test results, as these herds have a higher biosecurity risk for herds in the same locality.
This dashboard is also easily accessible on your mobile phone, which is convenient, especially if you need to check BVD results quickly.
While many farmers have given permission for their veterinary practitioner to access their data on ICBF, for those who still have to give access, we would strongly encourage you to do so.
This information allows your veterinary practitioner to assist and work with you on managing your herd health.
To give permission, you select the veterinary practice from the dropdown list.
If, for whatever reason, the practice name is not on the list, please contact ICBF.
Alternatively, your veterinary practitioner can print an authorisation form from the ICBF website for you to sign and send to ICBF.
Meanwhile, a number of Pig HealthCheck dashboards are also available but through a slightly different route.
These dashboards provide information on biosecurity and animal welfare assessments, ante-mortem data, Salmonella serology data and antimicrobial usage from each farm, benchmarking it against other farms that have shared their data.
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