Bord Bia inspection

Due an inspection here. The lad rang me at 7 last Saturday evening, didn’t see the phone so missed call and a txt message saying call him. I text him back and said ring on Monday. Well he rang at 10 Monday night. I was in bed. I said fuck this now he can ring me at a normal time of the day. Rang again last night at ten. I wouldn’t ring a family member at ten at night. I rang him back this morning when I was bringing back the cows at 6.45 no answer! Fuck sake can he not ring during the day? I’m not ringing him now! Maybe I’m overreacting but why can’t he ring me at a decent time
Missed a similar phone call today, only 6 minutes since the lad tried to ring and a text message to say contact him to set an inspection date and time, rang him straight away at 16.04, again 16.38, 16.50, 17.15 and 18.35 and no reply, fuck him and his "contact me" shite.
 
A few years ago I got a phone call from lad in the dept wanting to do an inspection at 11 am the next morning. I had a few small things wrong and on top of that I had an awful dose of a cold. The next morning I wasnt at all in form of any sort of inspection. I decided while I was waiting that I would make myself a hot whiskey and of course that led to a couple more. When the man landed I was in right good form and I decided that honesty was the best policy and showed him the things that I had wrong. He was very reasonable about the inspection and I started to tell him about my father even though he was over ten years dead still called the odd night to see me and tell me what to do from the foot of the bed. The next thing a crow landed in the yard and I said theres my best friend there now. The inspector said that it was help I needed not any more hassle and I got full payment without any delay. I suppose being as friendly as possible is a good help to get through any inspection.
 
Have to say that they have been quite curteous to us. They rang thursday afternoon to that they they wanted to do the remote audit next wednesday. Sent on the link. Rang a few minutes after they sent the link to ensure we got it. They rang on both friday morning and saturday morning to ask how we were getting on with uploading the pictures. I have really only started putting it together this morning. I have Herdapp and I spent a while tidying it up, making sure that purchase dockets matched what's in the virtual medicine cabinet and ensuring that dose dates followed order.

I have generated PDF reports. Has anyone attached the PDF reports rather than taking pictures of them?

We never received a Bord Bia Herdbook and they have asked us for a health plan. Theres a quite similar one on the app - I have filled it out and ran a PDF report of it too - I'm sure it will be ok for them.

The Mrs is gone to Boots for eyewash - she noticed this morning that the exp date on the bottle in the first aid kit was 09-2006.

I think we have everything in order. I will upload all the pics and the documents tonight and that will give us tomorrow if we are short of anything.

It's handy enough in the great scheme of things and helps to organise stuff.
 
Have to say that they have been quite curteous to us. They rang thursday afternoon to that they they wanted to do the remote audit next wednesday. Sent on the link. Rang a few minutes after they sent the link to ensure we got it. They rang on both friday morning and saturday morning to ask how we were getting on with uploading the pictures. I have really only started putting it together this morning. I have Herdapp and I spent a while tidying it up, making sure that purchase dockets matched what's in the virtual medicine cabinet and ensuring that dose dates followed order.

I have generated PDF reports. Has anyone attached the PDF reports rather than taking pictures of them?

We never received a Bord Bia Herdbook and they have asked us for a health plan. Theres a quite similar one on the app - I have filled it out and ran a PDF report of it too - I'm sure it will be ok for them.

The Mrs is gone to Boots for eyewash - she noticed this morning that the exp date on the bottle in the first aid kit was 09-2006.

I think we have everything in order. I will upload all the pics and the documents tonight and that will give us tomorrow if we are short of anything.

It's handy enough in the great scheme of things and helps to organise stuff.
If you have the lad from neighbouring parish you have no bother.lad from Boyle sound enough but particular
 
Have to say that they have been quite curteous to us. They rang thursday afternoon to that they they wanted to do the remote audit next wednesday. Sent on the link. Rang a few minutes after they sent the link to ensure we got it. They rang on both friday morning and saturday morning to ask how we were getting on with uploading the pictures. I have really only started putting it together this morning. I have Herdapp and I spent a while tidying it up, making sure that purchase dockets matched what's in the virtual medicine cabinet and ensuring that dose dates followed order.

I have generated PDF reports. Has anyone attached the PDF reports rather than taking pictures of them?

We never received a Bord Bia Herdbook and they have asked us for a health plan. Theres a quite similar one on the app - I have filled it out and ran a PDF report of it too - I'm sure it will be ok for them.

The Mrs is gone to Boots for eyewash - she noticed this morning that the exp date on the bottle in the first aid kit was 09-2006.

I think we have everything in order. I will upload all the pics and the documents tonight and that will give us tomorrow if we are short of anything.

It's handy enough in the great scheme of things and helps to organise stuff.
Re my previous post we got the water cert sorted and received via WhatsApp

Using HerdApp here as well mucky and just uploaded the pdf files. Much easier to do on laptop just email to yourself and drag to the bord Bia link. Used the milkedin app to up load the milk collection and tests.

Getting a reminder text everyday. On for Wednesday. A couple of of more stock pics to upload and should be OK.

Beef lamb and dairy here so takes a bit longer.
 
Have to say that they have been quite curteous to us. They rang thursday afternoon to that they they wanted to do the remote audit next wednesday. Sent on the link. Rang a few minutes after they sent the link to ensure we got it. They rang on both friday morning and saturday morning to ask how we were getting on with uploading the pictures. I have really only started putting it together this morning. I have Herdapp and I spent a while tidying it up, making sure that purchase dockets matched what's in the virtual medicine cabinet and ensuring that dose dates followed order.

I have generated PDF reports. Has anyone attached the PDF reports rather than taking pictures of them?

We never received a Bord Bia Herdbook and they have asked us for a health plan. Theres a quite similar one on the app - I have filled it out and ran a PDF report of it too - I'm sure it will be ok for them.

The Mrs is gone to Boots for eyewash - she noticed this morning that the exp date on the bottle in the first aid kit was 09-2006.

I think we have everything in order. I will upload all the pics and the documents tonight and that will give us tomorrow if we are short of anything.

It's handy enough in the great scheme of things and helps to organise stuff.
I literally clicked and dragged the pdf file from the emails from Herdwatch into the bord Bia upload page on the laptop and they were happy out with them
 
Well I rang the help desk number there lads. Bit of a disaster😂😂😂 the woman basically told me to ring him back, I said o did this morning. She said ring again that they are very busy during the day with audit work. I said it was unprofessional to be ringing at ten at night. In fairness I am in bed at ten! So she got pissed off when I asked for a new auditor then I got pissed off and said I’ll ring head office and asked her name and where she was based. She told me she didn’t have to give her name or where the help desk is based and told me to feck off and ring head office!
 
Inspection seemed to go alright, had to upload a few more pictures for him and he kept saying 100% as we went through each section, whether 100% will be on the cert only time will tell..
 
Uncle is in the middle of his and getting hassle. Bullock killed out with lesions in factory. Testing this week, reading tomorrow. Loads of grass and can’t buy in. Not a happy camper.
 
Our inspector wasn't really too professional. He was half an hour late to call us. 10 minutes into it he said that he had to take another call and was gone for half an hour more. He seemed confused with my remedy usage records saying that he had never audited anyone using that app before. He said that he needed to see the withdrawal dates and the amounts of the remedy used. It took almost 20 mins going through the document with him for him to finally say that the report was identical to the herdwatch report - I think he had scrolled the report down and couldn't read the headings on it.

He was very perplexed that we hadn't used any antibiotics on the farm in the last 12 months - it would have saved a lot of time of we had. Also he found it hard to get his head around the fact that we had no sprays stored on the farm and that we hadn't used any sprays in the last 2 years - it was on the report from the last audit that we had approximately 200ml in a litre bottle of roundup stored in an old freezer and the inspector had advised that we kept the shed door locked. I had a picture of the empty freezer for him but it seemed to bother him that there was nothing in it.

I had to send him more pictures. They had asked for a picture of the silage clamp or storage area. We store all bales on gravel at 2 locations. I took a picture of the empty bale yard. He said that my picture had to show bales actually stacked on it. I had to take 2 new pics yesterday. He gave me a pin to log in to the bord bia site but this won't let me upload the pics. I called the helpdesk and they gave me a number that I could text the pictures on to.

I think we passed but I'm not fully sure because he literally said "right, good luck" and hung up the phone before I could ask him.

Won't be killing anything till the end of may so plenty of time to sort out anything else.
 
Our inspector wasn't really too professional. He was half an hour late to call us. 10 minutes into it he said that he had to take another call and was gone for half an hour more. He seemed confused with my remedy usage records saying that he had never audited anyone using that app before. He said that he needed to see the withdrawal dates and the amounts of the remedy used. It took almost 20 mins going through the document with him for him to finally say that the report was identical to the herdwatch report - I think he had scrolled the report down and couldn't read the headings on it.

He was very perplexed that we hadn't used any antibiotics on the farm in the last 12 months - it would have saved a lot of time of we had. Also he found it hard to get his head around the fact that we had no sprays stored on the farm and that we hadn't used any sprays in the last 2 years - it was on the report from the last audit that we had approximately 200ml in a litre bottle of roundup stored in an old freezer and the inspector had advised that we kept the shed door locked. I had a picture of the empty freezer for him but it seemed to bother him that there was nothing in it.

I had to send him more pictures. They had asked for a picture of the silage clamp or storage area. We store all bales on gravel at 2 locations. I took a picture of the empty bale yard. He said that my picture had to show bales actually stacked on it. I had to take 2 new pics yesterday. He gave me a pin to log in to the bord bia site but this won't let me upload the pics. I called the helpdesk and they gave me a number that I could text the pictures on to.

I think we passed but I'm not fully sure because he literally said "right, good luck" and hung up the phone before I could ask him.

Won't be killing anything till the end of may so plenty of time to sort out anything else.
Had mine last Friday and have to say that the inspector couldn't have been more helpful. I would be glad to do it online going forward. I know you are a top class farmer but I would also have to say that if I was the inspector I would find it hard to believe that you hadn't used any antibiotics in the previous 12 months either!
 
Had mine last Friday and have to say that the inspector couldn't have been more helpful. I would be glad to do it online going forward. I know you are a top class farmer but I would also have to say that if I was the inspector I would find it hard to believe that you hadn't used any antibiotics in the previous 12 months either!
We have been farming the place for over 6 years now and have only had the vet once to treat a sick animal. That was in 2016. If bord bia don't believe us, its easy to get information from the vet. We used none on the home farm last year either and we would have 3X the number of animals on it. Have had 1 animal needing vet treatment in 2021.
 
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Primetime on rte the other night were investigating farmers self medicating animals. Heading across the border to get prescription only drugs here no bother.
 
Primetime on rte the other night were investigating farmers self medicating animals. Heading across the border to get prescription only drugs here no bother.
Its no wonder they want to restrict the sale of medicines and doses to vets only.
 
We have been farming the place for over 6 years now and have only had the vet once to treat a sick animal. That was in 2016. If bord bia don't believe us, its easy to get information from the vet. We used none on the home farm last year either and we would have 3X the number of animals on it. Have had 1 animal needing vet treatment in 2021.
It is unusual that you wouldn't even have one cow or calf to treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic like Noroclav or Synulox or something similar all the same, regardless of whether you had the vet out or not. That would trigger suspicion straight away if I was an inspector. I am not doubting that you didn't use them, I am just stating that if I was the inspector, I would be suspicious of that straight away and if I wasn't, then I wouldn't be doing my job correctly.
 
It is unusual that you wouldn't even have one cow or calf to treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic like Noroclav or Synulox or something similar all the same, regardless of whether you had the vet out or not. That would trigger suspicion straight away if I was an inspector. I am not doubting that you didn't use them, I am just stating that if I was the inspector, I would be suspicious of that straight away and if I wasn't, then I wouldn't be doing my job correctly.
Maybe we have been lucky with cows but the focus here has always been on preventing sickness. We use a natural product on calves when they are born and thankfully we haven't seen a scour in a long time. We also use some natural products on cows - not everyones cupvof tea but works well for us. Thats not to say that we dont look after animals of they get sick. We use 2 different vets (because of distance between 2 herds). Both are stringent record keepers and both give a duplicate docket of any meds administered including the animal number.
 
Maybe we have been lucky with cows but the focus here has always been on preventing sickness. We use a natural product on calves when they are born and thankfully we haven't seen a scour in a long time. We also use some natural products on cows - not everyones cupvof tea but works well for us. Thats not to say that we dont look after animals of they get sick. We use 2 different vets (because of distance between 2 herds). Both are stringent record keepers and both give a duplicate docket of any meds administered including the animal number.
Don't get me wrong, I am not having a go at all, I am merely stating that the inspector was only doing his or her job correctly by being slightly suspicious of not having any antibiotics at all used in the previous 12 months. There is an elderly dairy farmer (now retired) who I would know fairly well who had huge trouble with Bord Bia a number of years ago on an inspection, due to the fact that he had used zero anthelmintics on his cows for a number of years in succession. They wouldn't believe him even though it was the truth, he hadn't dosed his cows in a few years as his faecal egg samples suggested he didn't really need to dose. He was almost organic in his method of farming.

And by the way, I would say that your lack of use of antibiotics has very little to do with luck, probably more down to good herding and management and kudos to you for that.
 
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One bord bia man said to me that you should see on average 5 events in each milking cow if truth been told , fluke worms etc, 1 or 2 vaccines, dry cow tubes / sealers , odd antibiotic treatment etc mineral dose / boluses.when theres to little they get suspicious
 
Bord Bia "inspectors" need their wings clipped, they have no legal right investigate or interrogate farmers.
But then I wasn't willing to join early on even before they decided to do the Departments work for them illegally.
 
One bord bia man said to me that you should see on average 5 events in each milking cow if truth been told , fluke worms etc, 1 or 2 vaccines, dry cow tubes / sealers , odd antibiotic treatment etc mineral dose / boluses.when theres to little they get suspicious

I have the relevant information recorded for every animal. Young cattle get about 4 doses a year depending on dung samples but 2 of these might be a natural dose which isn't recorded. We vaccinate against pneumonia and ibr.

Are people really dosing cows for worms? Surely by the time an animal is 30 months she will have developed immunity to worms?

Cows here got a natural dose for fluke upon housing - the same dose that has been used on the farm for the last 70 years. We stopped using it for a few years and had awful problems with rumen fluke to the point where we lost animals (or lost half their condition due to the impact of the zanil or levafas diamond).

I find that the use of dose or antibiotics only leads on to more and more dependency on them. I know people that have the vet visit their farm several times a week at this time of year to look after sick calves. Money would be better spent on feeding cows properly, a power washer, disinfectant and proper bedding. Prevention is so much better than cure - an calf, weanling or store that is so sick that it needs antibiotics will never thrive well after it.

We don't buy in any animals here except for maybe a bull every 6 to 10 years.
 
I have the relevant information recorded for every animal. Young cattle get about 4 doses a year depending on dung samples but 2 of these might be a natural dose which isn't recorded. We vaccinate against pneumonia and ibr.

Are people really dosing cows for worms? Surely by the time an animal is 30 months she will have developed immunity to worms?

Cows here got a natural dose for fluke upon housing - the same dose that has been used on the farm for the last 70 years. We stopped using it for a few years and had awful problems with rumen fluke to the point where we lost animals (or lost half their condition due to the impact of the zanil or levafas diamond).

I find that the use of dose or antibiotics only leads on to more and more dependency on them. I know people that have the vet visit their farm several times a week at this time of year to look after sick calves. Money would be better spent on feeding cows properly, a power washer, disinfectant and proper bedding. Prevention is so much better than cure - an calf, weanling or store that is so sick that it needs antibiotics will never thrive well after it.

We don't buy in any animals here except for maybe a bull every 6 to 10 years.
Definately alot of milkers even done once if not twice during the grazing season for worms.( non withdrawel pour ins.) Some says it ask helps prevent tick borne fever......heavy stocking and cows would be coughing alright
persume its bluestone your referring too as natural dose.had a job explaining it to 1st auditor i had here
 
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