Keeping Your Herd Clean and Well: A Short Guide

Keeping your herd clean is one of the most important tasks that any person working on a farm must undertake. There are so many reasons why you must place herd cleanliness at the front and centre of your processes and way of working on a farm of any kind. For starters it helps to minimise the risk of infection and disease in the first place for a single animal, but then also helps to limit the spread of disease in the worst-case scenarios. A clean herd that is healthy will function in the way that they are meant to, making life easier for employees on the farm, which in turn passes on to the consumer, and the profits of the farm.

Farmers understand the inherent dangers and potential problems that an outbreak of disease can cause on any farm. Disease and infection can spread so quickly amongst a herd, causing decimation, illness and fatalities that are difficult to recover from (for both the animals and the profitability of the farm itself). The more you can do to prevent infection and disease, the better your farm will be prepared to stop an outbreak from spreading and causing further damage to the herd.

It is important to develop and implement cleaning processes and protocols, which you can then improve through careful use of specialist cleaning and disinfectant products from your supplier. This should include a separation of different areas on the farm, so that there is never a situation where infection can easily enter the areas where the animals sleep for instance. In order to come into contact with the herd it is important that a person has been fully disinfected from the outside world and that they are wearing the relevant personal protective clothing and equipment (ppe).

Cleaning and disinfecting are two very different processes, and it is important to point this out. Every single day every area should be completely cleaned, with any equipment or tools used around animals also cleaned and disinfected thoroughly. Areas should be cleaned out before disinfected, especially in areas where animals are sleeping and producing bodily waste. It is vital that manure and other materials are cleared out regularly, that sleeping areas are kept dry and clean, and once this has been achieved you can move on to the process of disinfecting entire areas utilising the correct equipment and disinfectants to do so.

Working with a supplier of farm cleaning and disinfectant products is an important process within animal herd hygiene and cleanliness. In order to ensure that the protocols that you have implemented are completed to the highest of standards means that you must rely on not only your employees to perform their duties effectively and to a consistently high standard, but that you are also using equipment and products that are also of the highest standard. Whether you are looking to purchase cleaning products for a dairy farm, disinfectants to clean out a poultry farm, or you require health supplements during calving and lambing season, it is vital that you can count on your supplier to deliver the goods.

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