Fellow suckler farmers - are ye Bord Bia approved?

Suckler to beef and calf to beef here. Always have been qa assured for donkeys years. And it s a doddle to get it.

At the end of the day. It's the paperwork that we have to have if you had a Dept inspection. The biggest hurdle most people find is sorting out the drug and remedies register. If you keep on top of this the rest is a piece of peddle.

No matter what you do they will have to find some small area for improvement.

Better to have the carrot than the stick.

Just wondering is there any stats on the % of farms that get a dept inspection that are qa and not qa

The buzz word now is carbon nuetral,

Enterprises will have to be carbon nuetral if beef , lamb and milk ever goes in surplus again

In Bord Bia QA since it started ( all cattle to factory - so no choice really ) not difficult to stay approved, and i do a year and a half of paperwork the night before inspection. One thing thats frustrating is this carbon footprint and the calculation. Spread little or no fertilizer but because i'm lowly stocked and let cattle go to near 30 months my carbon footprint is higher than average. Now on an individual animal basis I see this makes sense ( animal killed at 16 months will emit less methane over their lifetime than one at 30 ) but you will keep more animals on a farm that way so overall you will produce/ emit the same amount if that makes sense. Got a Beef Benchmarking Report from ICBF ( Herdplus ) lately (selected for pilot - lucky me ! ) and its all down in black and white - every animal killed, weights, daily gains, carbon footprint etc. They have everything about us at the touch of computer button

Or you can use an excel file or whatever. It doesn’t matter how it’s recorded as long as it is recorded and captures the required details.

Go into your vets and ask for a drugs register report, it lists all the medicine you bought in the last 12 months or so. Look at what medicine you've left and work out what was used. If you buy dosing in an agri store, go ask for a statement and do the same. 6 months records are needed for new applicants I think.

Herdwatch here for a good few years. Never a problem for bord bia or cross compliance inspections.

Email file to whoever including yourself and print.

Has the whole lot. As far as I know, herdwatch was invented to help farmers have their records easily recorded for compliance reasons.

Just to clarify. Herd watch will generate a report with the headings as per the drug remedies book. This is what they look for. Just as do they wish to view it on a laptop as a PDF or do they want it printed.

In the current climate BB should accept it as pdf, as it is lowering the carbon footprint on the farm

When you are using these herd management apps, you have to agree to going paperless with the herd register. This syncs with agfoods AIMS. The herd register is nearly obsolete, as it's in the cloud. Any movement is notified to agfood, eg mart, farm to farm sale, factory, knackery. The only entry that farmers have then is the registration of calves.

Have the remedies up to date, with the necessary invoices and you are nearly home and hosed. My dosing would be bought in 2 merchants and the vets. I have 2 ring binders and once a month put the invoices into there respective folder. Everything is in date order then and no trouble to find.

Invoices that are emailed now are bloody fantastic