Pig herd health plan pilot
As part of the Farm Health Planning partnership, Defra has commissioned a pilot project to design, test and implement a web-based Pig Herd Health Plan (PHHP). This project is being managed by Livestock Management Systems at the University of Aberdeen as part of a Defra funded research project on risk factors for pig disease.
This pilot project involves collaboration between the National Pig Association (NPA), the British Pig Executive (BPEX), the Pig Veterinary Society (PVS) and producers, in partnership with Defra.
The pilot PHHP will act as an information hub dedicated to pig health, linking information on health management factors, veterinary inputs, pig production data, and carcase quality. It is designed to support health management on individual farms via a personal, password-protected link to the Internet based system.
The aim of the PHHP is to provide up to date information on individual pig herds, which will be shared with veterinarians, on-line, in practice, and on paper if needed. The system can also provide action lists, veterinary summaries, and quarterly reports.
The project will demonstrate that standardised, electronic based approaches to health planning have the potential for farms to benchmark management within practices, local groups or production schemes.
The project involves 20 farms from 10 veterinary practices in Yorkshire and East Anglia, covering a range of farm types including farrowing to finishing units, indoor and outdoor units, those with 200 sows up to those with 1000 sows, those with good existing records and those with poor, and those which are IT literate and those which are not.
The project also includes a survey of participant producers and vets to assess their attitudes to herd health planning.
The pilot project is due for completion in later in 2007.
A website has been set up which demonstrates all the features of the web-based health plan being used in this project. The link to this website is www.demo.phhpanalysis.com.
If you have any comments on this health plan, please email us at fhp@defra.gsi.gov.uk.
Page last modified:
August 30, 2007
Page published: 17 May 2007