News Article

Flock Health Club

Tuesday, 2 August 2016 - 10:08am

There is a nationwide drive to improve communications between sheep farmer and their vets; as part of this initiative, the St Boniface Vets farm team are launching a new flock health club.  The idea of flock health clubs, which are vet led sheep farmer discussion groups, has been around for a while and has had fantastic results already in areas of Northern England.

Members will be charged £15 a month and this cost effective club would facilitate sharing of ideas and independent vet advice between enthusiastic and forward thinking farmers and vets.

The Flock Health Club subscription would cover:-

  • Quarterly meetings
  • Bench marking performance within the group

To make the group work well for discussion, we want to keep the farms represented similar, so we are opening this group to farmers with over 100 ewes only.

If people with smaller flocks are interested, please let Ruth or Harriet know and we'll look at running a second group.

Meetings

Quarterly meetings around topics chosen by the group, therefore tailored to what is relevant to your farm.  The focus will be on sharing the latest information and research, then time for discussion with the other members.

Benchmarking

Do you know your cost of production?

Only 14% of UK sheep farmers know their profitability. In a time where margins are tight, maximising flock output and minimising cost is essential.

Using benchmarking software, we can anonymously compare your flock performance to other farms in the area and national averages.

This helps provide robust, independent advice and allow tailored improvements to your flock performance. 

Most farmers already record basic data for flock health plans and with as little data as number of ewes to the tup, scanning figures and lamb sales, it is possible to provide some targets to work towards.

Identifying and targeting problem areas on farm can save money on treatment costs and loss of production, allowing investment in prevention.

If you would like to discuss this with one of our farm team, please click the link to send an email or call 01363 772860.