Herdwatch is a fantastic tool for making compliance easy, but it’s only as good as what you put into it, and you must watch out for a few things when it comes to compliance. If you’re unsure about any of this, just contact us and we will be glad to help.
IMPORTANT: If you have a Cross Compliance or Bord Bia audit coming up, you MUST have all relevant compliance reports printed or available on a computer (or your phone) before the audit takes place. While it is technically allowed, we do not recommend just handing your phone to the inspector or auditor! If you make their life easier by printing the reports, they will thank you for it ;-)
To get your reports in Herdwatch, follow these easy steps:
Yes, but not so fast… if you have any written compliance records (remedies etc…) covering previous years, you must keep those until the regulatory time has elapsed (currently at least 5 years for bovine remedies)
Once you start recording all your cattle remedies in Herdwatch, this is done in a fully compliant manner so you don’t need to re-enter them in the blue book or on any kind of paperwork.
However, in order to be fully compliant with the Department of Agriculture Herd Register and Movements legislation, you must register on the Agfood website for the Bovine Electronic Register. This removes the need to maintain your Herd book if you also use Herdwatch*.
Even though you are set up on Agfood and Herdwatch you will not automatically be registered for Bovine Electronic Register. It’s very easy to register for this, simply follow the Steps below;
1. Log into Agfood.ie
2. Go into Animal Identifications and Movements
3. Click on Herd (Its located on the top of the page)
4. Click on Bovine Electronic Herd Register
5. You will have to enter your email address twice and click the Terms and Conditions box.
This means that the Agfood website will act as your official Herd register should you have a Cross Compliance inspection.
*Note: You should take regular backups of your Herdwatch information by running the relevant Herdwatch reports which you can then archive to a secure location for safe-keeping.
Herdwatch saves a lot of time on farm to farm movements, but you have to make sure you stay compliant by taking all steps outlined below:
Spray applications recorded in Herdwatch will only update the quantity left on the spray you selected when creating the application. If you used more spray than was in that container, you can still adjust the quantity in other spray containers in Herdwatch by following these steps:
If you are subscribed to Herdwatch and ICBF Herd Plus, we will automatically send your serves, scans, weights, dry-offs and calf size/vigour to ICBF every day (as long as they have been backed up to our server). This will save you hours in data entry.
Note: if you do not wish to send these events to ICBF automatically please contact us and we can turn it off (The integration can only be turned on or off for ALL events)