Do you keep track of cows – and calves – that you treat?? I don’t care the size of your operation, or whether you have lactating cows or just raise heifers. If you treat a cow, do you have a system of keeping track of who was treated and when? Talk to a producer that has had a drug residue violation – chances are, they wish they had tracked animals a little bit closer and they now know far more about the process that they wished they knew sooner.
Electronic Records Aren’t Enough
You may track your herd via electronic means – Dairy Comp, PC Dart, some notepad app on your phone – and that’s great. It may give you instant access to a whole history of what a particular cow has been through. But what the FDA really wants is paper records with specific information recorded that may not be necessarily recorded via electronic means.
Information Required
If you follow Beef Quality Assurance Guidelines, you may already know the information required. At each treatment, the information required for that treatment includes the following items:
- Animal ID
- Date of treatment
- Reason for treatment/diagnosis
- Drug Administered
- Amount Administered/Treatment regimen/Duration of Treatment
- Route of administration (IV, sub-Q, IM, pour-on, etc)
- Withdrawal time for meat and/or milk with anticipated withhold dates listed
- Person who administered the drug
Again, this information should be documented in writing. Many farms choose to keep a 3-ring binder to keep chronological order of treatment records. See the picture above the title for a sample of how you can document this information. At a minimum, 3 full years of treatments should be on hand.
Standard Operating Procedures
It is also a good practice to maintain written SOP’s for giving treatments. Your herd veterinarian can help you write these, and templates can be found on the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (F.A.R.M.) Program website (http://www.nationaldairyfarm.com/resource-library). Bottom line, if you have a drug on your farm, you need to make sure there is a written SOP for when you plan to use it. Information on the SOP needs to include when the particular drug should be used or for which disease the drug is used for, how the animal should be treated, the drug used, location of treatment, and duration of treatment.
Group Treatment Records
When treating groups of cows with drugs that may cause a withhold time (e.g. vaccinations or deworming medications), you can simplify the records. The information required is still the same, but rather than repeating out all the information for each animal, one date with the group treatment information can be listed, with all animals in that treatment group identified.
Culling Records
Many farms also keep a separate 3-ring binder for cows that have left the herd – both sold and died. These records can include more information on drug treatments and withhold dates, as well as the sold date and reason for culling. It’s a good way to double check that the cow is saleable when her time comes to leave the farm.