Today I am Barcelona, Spain. What for? For the kick-off meeting of a new European Union project called EU-PLF. The PLF is an abbreviation for Precision Livestock Farming. This is a field that is relatively novel and can be defined as the use of technologies to measure physiological, behavior and production indicators on individual animals to improve management. In my opinion it is moving away from managing animals in a group towards managing animals individually. That is great, because increased labor efficiency leads farmers more and more to management animals in groups, while animals have individual requirements. So PLF can make management at the individual animal level possible under labour constraints. Farmers only have to pay attention to those animals that need their attention. The farmer does not have to disturb animals which are doing well. This idea has been identified as management by exception. An interesting overview paper has recently been written by Jeffrey Bewley, who is working at the University of Kentucky and in my opinion the person in the US working on Precision Dairy Farming.
In Europe quite a lot of initiatives are taken in the field of PLF. The EU-PLF has started as mentioned before. The preliminary version of the website is available now.In the Netherlands a project named Smart Dairy Farming, supported by a large number of funding agencies and private companies has started last year. A website is not yet available, but will be soon (I will let you know). Private companies are working on applications, for instance in relation to automatic milking systems, but also stand alone systems are becoming available.
For a number of years, in Europe the ECPLF conference is organized in, in 2013 for the 6th time and this time in Leuven. In North America, the second North American Precision Dairy Farming Conference will be organized in Rochester, Minnesota. It was a great honour for me that I was invited as keynote presenter. Apparently I did not do too bad during my previous keynote presentation at the first North American Precision Dairy Farming Conference. The topic of that presentation was Sensors and Milk Quality, the Quest for the Perfect Alert. It dealt with the difficulties that appear when you want to detect mastitis with sensors. Much research has been done in that field, but still the performance of sensor systems is not ideal. The presentation (and another one presented at the same conference is available on-line (I will add these presentations later, because slideshare.net does not let me upload files at the slow upload speed I have here at this hotel). Moreover, the paper I wrote for that meeting has later been rewritten and has been published in the scientific journal Sensors.
It is great that precision livestock farming is having so much interest at the moment. There are very large opportunities for this type of technique. You will certainly hear more on this item later on.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Animal health on organic dairy farms
It is known that consumers (at least in western countries) are becoming increasingly sensitive about health and welfare problems in commercial livestock production systems. They expect their food to be produced with greater respect for the needs of farm animals. Research has shown that organic farming is often directly associated with an enhanced level of animal health and welfare. For many people, organic farming appears to be a superior alternative to conventional livestock production. Organic farming has committed itself to outperforming conventional farming in a number of areas including animal health. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) states that organic husbandry focuses on improving animal health and preventing disease through a holistic approach, thus minimising use of synthetic medicine.
Now let’s have a look at the requirements of organic dairy farming. Basically these are (please note that requirements may differ between regions in the world; I copied these from OMAFRA):
· Managing crop and pasture land without the use of synthetic fertilizers, genetically engineered (modified) organisms (GMOs), fungicides, herbicides or insecticides for 3 consecutive years
· Maintaining accurate records for production management, including machinery usage and cleaning, rented land and storage
· Feeding 100% organic rations to cows and replacement heifers (with certain exceptions, such as minerals and essential ingredients that cannot be sourced as organic)
· Avoiding the use of antibiotics or synthetic hormones - under the supervision of a veterinarian, antibiotic use is permitted twice a year per cow but the withdrawal period must be extended; vaccination, vitamins and electrolytes are allowed.
· Providing access to certified organic grazing land throughout the growing season, weather permitting. Pasture must provide at least 30% of the total dry matter intake. The animal should have access to the outside throughout the year.
When looking at these demands it becomes apparent that these demands are not really related to improved animal health. It is known that pasturing, if done correctly, is related to better health of dairy cows. On the other hand, the high price of organic feed might lead to suboptimal feeding of cows. The rules with regards to the use of drugs might be related to non-optimal treatment when animals are ill. In short, the benefits of organic systems are primarily related to environmentally-friendly production. Studies have shown that the health of cattle on organic dairy farms is, on average, not better than the health of cattle on conventional dairy farms.
So with this in mind, the real animal health status in organic dairy farming does not in all respect meet consumers’ expectations or their associations. Improvements are therefore crucial to maintain the consumers’ confidence and their willingness to pay premium prices.
The strategic aim of the IMPRO project is to substantially overcome the weak points in current health management strategies on organic dairy farms and increase the possibilities for proactive herd health management. Attention is not only given to developing all kinds of tools but as well to the farm-specific costs and benefits of recommended measures, to optimise farm-specific allocation of available resources, and to emerge incentives for health improvements. Moreover the motivation and attitudes of the stakeholders (farmer, advisor, and veterinarian) directly involved in health management practice will be studied.
More info can be find on the IMPRO website (which will be filled in due time).
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Keynote lecture economics of production diseases
Last monday, I gave an invited keynote presentation on Economics of production diseases on the World Buiatrics Conference, which this year is being held in Lisbon, Portugal. The world buiatrics conference is aimed at practising bovine veterinarians. Although I am close to vets, I am not a vet myself so this was the first time I was present at a World Buiatrics Conference, and I have to say, it was/is a pleasant experience. The conference is very well organized, enough practical as well as scientificially interesting content and a good atmosphere. I understood there are about 2500 registrants and you do not notice that during the meeting. For those that are interested, the next meeting will be in 2014 in Cairns (Australia; I could not find a website yet).
Anyhow, back to the contents, within the session Epidemiology and animal health economics, I had to present a 45 min keynote presentation entitled Economics of Production Diseases. It was great that the room was packed. All seats were full and people were standing in the back to see this presentation. The topic is hot!!! And that is logical, since the milk prices are becoming more and more volatile, farmers are worrying about costs and benefits more and more. Advices of veterinarians costs money, that is clear, but how much can be earned and will improved prevention be cost-effective. This is the link to this presentation.
In the presentation I gave an overview of the way we should look at production diseases from an economic point of view. Moreover, I gave our latest results on costs of mastitis, of foot disorders and on metabolic disorders. Moreover, I provided data that shows that these costs vary a lot between farmers. So working with average costs of diseases will not be a good thing, since the average farm does not exist, also not when economics of diseases are regarded. Finally I presented some data on the cost-effectiveness of preventive measures. The details can be found in the presentation, but the bottomline is that the costs of preventive measures are relatively easy to estimate. The benefits, though, are much harder to estimate. Not much scientific literature is available to quantify the effects of implementation of preventive measures. That means we have to use expertise, the so called "guestimates". While we did that we found that not all possible preventive measures are cost-effective. Some of them are, some of them are not.
To conclude, this means that when proposing improved disease management the advisor:
1. should be aware of the costs of diseases on a specific farm
2. should try to make a farm-specific estimate of the effect of the measure
3 should have some idea about the costs and benefits of these measures to be a good counter-part of the farmer in his/her animal health decisions.
We have some tools developed ( and I hope we can develop some more in the future) that will support advisors in this task. They can be found the website of the Business Economics group of Wageningen University.
Anyhow, back to the contents, within the session Epidemiology and animal health economics, I had to present a 45 min keynote presentation entitled Economics of Production Diseases. It was great that the room was packed. All seats were full and people were standing in the back to see this presentation. The topic is hot!!! And that is logical, since the milk prices are becoming more and more volatile, farmers are worrying about costs and benefits more and more. Advices of veterinarians costs money, that is clear, but how much can be earned and will improved prevention be cost-effective. This is the link to this presentation.
In the presentation I gave an overview of the way we should look at production diseases from an economic point of view. Moreover, I gave our latest results on costs of mastitis, of foot disorders and on metabolic disorders. Moreover, I provided data that shows that these costs vary a lot between farmers. So working with average costs of diseases will not be a good thing, since the average farm does not exist, also not when economics of diseases are regarded. Finally I presented some data on the cost-effectiveness of preventive measures. The details can be found in the presentation, but the bottomline is that the costs of preventive measures are relatively easy to estimate. The benefits, though, are much harder to estimate. Not much scientific literature is available to quantify the effects of implementation of preventive measures. That means we have to use expertise, the so called "guestimates". While we did that we found that not all possible preventive measures are cost-effective. Some of them are, some of them are not.
To conclude, this means that when proposing improved disease management the advisor:
1. should be aware of the costs of diseases on a specific farm
2. should try to make a farm-specific estimate of the effect of the measure
3 should have some idea about the costs and benefits of these measures to be a good counter-part of the farmer in his/her animal health decisions.
We have some tools developed ( and I hope we can develop some more in the future) that will support advisors in this task. They can be found the website of the Business Economics group of Wageningen University.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Grazing and dairy production
Last weekend was Easter weekend. For the Hogeveen family this means that on first Easter day (Sunday) we go to church to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and after that spend some time with family. For second Easter day (Monday) it is time to go outside and because of that there are many activities.
Since a few years, FrieslandCampina organizes the Campina boerderijdagen (farm-days) to bring the people in contact with dairy farming and the source their products. It think that they started four or five years ago with that initiative. This second Easter day, 43 Dutch dairy farms opened their gates for the citizens to see the way milk is produced. This year, Campina thought about adding a new element to the open days: Grazing. For the Dutch dairy sector and its aim towards sustainability, grazing is becoming an important item. See for instance the new quality program Foqus.
The open farms were farms that applied grazing and at exactly 12 AM the cows were let outside for the first time this spring. Those of you that have ever seen that: the first time that cows go out is great to watch. Cows are eager to go out, are partly blinded by the outside light and go out running and juming. All in all a great sight.
One of the open farms was (again) the farm, named Ooyevaarshorst of the Wassenaar family in Leusden. They are neighbours of my parents, so the plan was to have a look at this open farm and be there at noon. The morning was quite relaxed and we were a little late, but we could make it easy at noon. Wrong thinking!!!! We entered the small road leading to the Wassenaar farm and to our enourmous surprise, it was filled with cars and people all going to see the cows going out for the first time!! This despite the lousy weather, because it was raining cats and dogs. I understood that more than 3,500 people were present.
The 70 Red Holstein dairy cows of Niels Wassenaar going outside for the first time in 2012, watched by a large crowd of citizens.
Why this story on my, more ore less science oriented blog on Animal Health Management. As you might know, animal health is related to animal welfare and one of the reasons we are spending more and more efforts to control production diseases is the fact that production diseases are related to welfare of animals. Of course there are many other elements in animal husbandry besides diseases that are related to animal welfare. Grazing is one of these items. It enables cows to explore their natural behaviour much better than in a barn. Moreover it is good to prevent diseases as well, think about claw health and the reduced infectious pressure in pastures in relation to barns.
However, grazing is more and more difficult to combine with modern dairy farming, where herd seizes are larger, milk production levels are higher and more cows are milked with automatic milking systems. Therefore, there is a tendency amongst Dutch dairy farmers to keep cows inside year around. In science there is a debate whether this is bad or not for welfare, whether we can design barn systems that are as good for cow welfare as grazing. In a Dutch project: "De koe en wij", farmers are followed in their decisions with regard to grazing. At their website, much info on grazing and its effects, can be found. There are all kind of arguments that can be made in favour of grazing or against grazing. Scientists might even "prove" that certain barn systems are as good for the animal welfare as grazing, but we are forgetting the perception of the Dutch citizen. Cows have to be outside: that is natural. Period.
The success of these types of open days opened my eyes. I am afraid that we can try to "educate" the citizens as much as we want, but we will not succeed in convincing them that a "good" system without grazing is possible. Milk and milk products of Dutch original that are sold in Dutch supermarkets, should be originating from cows that have been grazing. The perception of foreign citizens and consumers might be a little different, so this might require different sources of milk for different customers. Demand-driven milk production.
Finally, the visitors to the open farm day were lucky: a cow was delivering a young calf. I can imagine that Niels Wassenaar was quite nervous, doing this delivery with so many eyes watching, but luckily, the delivery went easy and a healthy new calf was born.
 |
| The old farm Ooyevaarshorst in Leusden |
Since a few years, FrieslandCampina organizes the Campina boerderijdagen (farm-days) to bring the people in contact with dairy farming and the source their products. It think that they started four or five years ago with that initiative. This second Easter day, 43 Dutch dairy farms opened their gates for the citizens to see the way milk is produced. This year, Campina thought about adding a new element to the open days: Grazing. For the Dutch dairy sector and its aim towards sustainability, grazing is becoming an important item. See for instance the new quality program Foqus.
 |
| The new free stall barn |
 |
| Place for 80 dairy cows |
The open farms were farms that applied grazing and at exactly 12 AM the cows were let outside for the first time this spring. Those of you that have ever seen that: the first time that cows go out is great to watch. Cows are eager to go out, are partly blinded by the outside light and go out running and juming. All in all a great sight.
Why this story on my, more ore less science oriented blog on Animal Health Management. As you might know, animal health is related to animal welfare and one of the reasons we are spending more and more efforts to control production diseases is the fact that production diseases are related to welfare of animals. Of course there are many other elements in animal husbandry besides diseases that are related to animal welfare. Grazing is one of these items. It enables cows to explore their natural behaviour much better than in a barn. Moreover it is good to prevent diseases as well, think about claw health and the reduced infectious pressure in pastures in relation to barns.
However, grazing is more and more difficult to combine with modern dairy farming, where herd seizes are larger, milk production levels are higher and more cows are milked with automatic milking systems. Therefore, there is a tendency amongst Dutch dairy farmers to keep cows inside year around. In science there is a debate whether this is bad or not for welfare, whether we can design barn systems that are as good for cow welfare as grazing. In a Dutch project: "De koe en wij", farmers are followed in their decisions with regard to grazing. At their website, much info on grazing and its effects, can be found. There are all kind of arguments that can be made in favour of grazing or against grazing. Scientists might even "prove" that certain barn systems are as good for the animal welfare as grazing, but we are forgetting the perception of the Dutch citizen. Cows have to be outside: that is natural. Period.
The success of these types of open days opened my eyes. I am afraid that we can try to "educate" the citizens as much as we want, but we will not succeed in convincing them that a "good" system without grazing is possible. Milk and milk products of Dutch original that are sold in Dutch supermarkets, should be originating from cows that have been grazing. The perception of foreign citizens and consumers might be a little different, so this might require different sources of milk for different customers. Demand-driven milk production.
Finally, the visitors to the open farm day were lucky: a cow was delivering a young calf. I can imagine that Niels Wassenaar was quite nervous, doing this delivery with so many eyes watching, but luckily, the delivery went easy and a healthy new calf was born.
 |
| My daughter trying to get a glimpse of the delivery of a calf |
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Automatic milking; a little history
As you might know, I am working in the field of animal health management since 1989, the year I started with my PhD work. Yes, that is already quite a long time. In the meantime I have gathered an enormous amount of materials, reports, scientific papers, students theses that I have been advising etc. Because my work is split over two locations (Wageningen University and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University) and as now and then I work at home as well, this gives sometimes problems. If you need something it is always at the other place. So I am trying to digitalize everything. Which is a large task that I do when I have a large lack of inspiration to do something else. Therefore, this project might take a couple of years.
Anyhow, last week I was having such an hour and I ran into an old IMAG report. This report marks, in my opinion the start of the automatic milking era in the dairy production, so it is worthwhile to give it a little attention in my blog.
IMAG was the institute for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering. It does not exist anymore and most of the work they were doing is now done by Livestock Research of Wageningen UR. With people such as Wim Rossing, IMAG was one of the key players in developments with regard to automation in the dairy sector. One of the developments was the transponder which enabled individual cow management. One of the first developments building on this transponder was the concentrate feeding box. Cows could enter these boxes, were recognized and the concentrates ration was determined by the computer.
The possibilities of individual cow identification enabled researchers to think about many sensors that could be used to monitor individual cow statuses (milk temperature, electrical conductivity, steps, body weight etc.). One other thing researchers thought about was the possibility to automatically milk a cow: a milking robot. One method of to reach this was to install a robot arm in a feeder box, where cows are coming anyway to get concentrates and milk the cow at that place. Many other possibilities have been thougth about as well but it goes too far to discuss these here.
In 1984, at IMAG a feasibility study was done. In their experimental farm (de Vijf Roeden), a concentrate feeder was made as a 1-side, 1 place milking parlour. Cows could enter the concentrate feeder and if eligible for milking, a student attached and removed the milking cluster. To resemble a real automatic milking situation, students were in the "milking parlour" for 24 hours per day during the total experiment of 11 weeks.
What were the results: the cows visited the feeder box on average 5.4 times per day, of which they were, on average, milked 4 times per day. This gave an increased production level: cows produced 5 kg milk more per day than they did normally (when milked twice per day). No negative side effects were found, so the researchers concluded that the feeding box is a useful place for milking. The door was open for further development of automatic milking and this report is truly a mark in this development. For those interested, I have put a copy of the report on Slideshare
Anyhow, last week I was having such an hour and I ran into an old IMAG report. This report marks, in my opinion the start of the automatic milking era in the dairy production, so it is worthwhile to give it a little attention in my blog.
IMAG was the institute for Agricultural and Environmental Engineering. It does not exist anymore and most of the work they were doing is now done by Livestock Research of Wageningen UR. With people such as Wim Rossing, IMAG was one of the key players in developments with regard to automation in the dairy sector. One of the developments was the transponder which enabled individual cow management. One of the first developments building on this transponder was the concentrate feeding box. Cows could enter these boxes, were recognized and the concentrates ration was determined by the computer.
 |
| A modern concentrate feeder box |
In 1984, at IMAG a feasibility study was done. In their experimental farm (de Vijf Roeden), a concentrate feeder was made as a 1-side, 1 place milking parlour. Cows could enter the concentrate feeder and if eligible for milking, a student attached and removed the milking cluster. To resemble a real automatic milking situation, students were in the "milking parlour" for 24 hours per day during the total experiment of 11 weeks.
 |
| Setup of the milking in a feeder box experiment |
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Parasites in cattle
Some years ago, I gave a presentation for the Flemish for Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics (VEE; http://www.fsvee.be/). It was about the economics of production diseases. During the drinks (always useful) after this meeting a young Belgan research from Gent University, Johannes Charlier approached me. He was working on the epidemiology of parasitic diseases in dairy cattle and was thinking about the possibilities to add an economic component to his work. In fact I had never considered parasites in dairy cattle very much. From my BSc years I remember the problem of parasites in calves and the things you can do with grazing of calves in order to prevent infection with certain parasites. Moreover I knew a few things about the use of anthelmintics.
Recently I learned that the whole topic of parasite infections in calves is quite a nice equilibirum with many trade-offs. Exposure of young stock to parasites builds up their immunity which prevents them for serious negative effects of parasitic infections when they are olders. In the Netherlands Harm Ploeger has published much about those items, e.g., this paper on relation between treatment of one-year old calves and milk production in the first lactation, and it is a fascinating field. An interesting summary of this knowledge can be found in the "parasietenwijzer" or "parasite compendiuim": http://www.parasietenwijzer.nl/
But let's go back to the work of Johannes Charlier. At that time Johannes was focussing on parasites in lactating cattle. He wanted to make a tool for farmers and their advisors to calculate the costs of parasites in dairy cattle, so they can think about proper measures (or not) in case the economic losses are large. The result was a programme called ParaCalc®.
Recently the scientific paper associated with this calculation tool was published in the journal Veterinary Parasitology. Besides a description of the tool, default calculations are provided, based on input parameters from 93 Belgian dairy herds. For those herds, the estimated median cost per year per cow was € 46 [25th-75th percentile: € 29 - € 58] for gastrointesitnal nematode infections. For liver fluke infections the median costs were € 6 [25th-75th percentile: € 0 - € 19] per cow pwer year. The most important components of these costs are milk production losses.
Six veterinarians evaluated the programme and thought it was a useful tool to raise the farmer's awareness with regard to worm infections.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Veterinary herd health management programs
When I started with my MSc project at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (back in 1989; a long time ago :-), at the department called at that time Herd health and reproduction, the professor of that department (and later my promotor during my PhD), prof. Arie Brand was on a mission to convince the Dutch and world veterinarians that veterinary herd health and management programs are the future. The trends he and others saw are still there: increasing herd seizes, and decreasing sales of skills and drugs. However, those developments were less quick than anticipated. Yes, more and more veterinary practises see herd health management as an important part of their practise, but a large part of the income of veterinary practises is still generated by the sales of skills and drugs. It seems to be difficult to earn a decent profit on the sales of "advisorship time".
Currently, at least in the Dutch veterinary world, there is much uncertainty and discussion about the future. Dutch dairy farms are growing rapidly in seize and that means the attitude of dairy farmers is changing. Dairy farmers are less and less people that accept what you say, but are becoming more and more people that work in partnerships. And being a vet in that changing environment is a challenging task.
Veterinarians have to adapt to that new situation. In my opinion, herd health management programs should move beyond the classic monthly farm visits for pregnancy checks and talks about production records. Tailor made programs should be created to meet the farmers requirements around dairy cattle health. Requirements might differ between farmers and veterinarians should move away from the "one seize fits all approach". Modern cattle veterinary practice is about making life of farmers with regard to animal health easier. The costs and benefits of the offered programs become more important, although that is not the only decision criterium of the farmers. Veterinarians should develop "tools" that can be used in herd health management programs, especially when you want to distinguish yourself from your colleague-competitors (other vet practises or other advisors) on the farm advisory market. In the Netherlands standard tools, based on MPR data are offered in the PiR-DAP program (http://www.pir-dap.nl/) and are a great support for herd health programs.
Although I belief that herd health management programs are effective, there has not been much research done. In the old days (1970's) a very interesting project has been carried out on herd health programs (published in a series of papers by Jan Sol et al in 1984 in the Veterinary Quarterly) where it was shown in a great intervention study that herd health programs did have an important effect on the profitability of dairy farms. One of my own MSc theses showed that the beneficial effects did not sustain when the project was ended and herd health management programs were not continued (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016758779290035E).
It is great that last year Marjolein Derks started her work as PhD at the department of Farm Animal Health of Utrecht University (financed by CRV) on the effectivity of herd health programs and the possibility to develop new support tools.
Last year I gave two presentations aimed at dairy cattle veterinarians. One on the specific demands of larger dairy farms for herd health management programs (at least my vision on those demands): http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2011-0329-pir-dap-bijeenkomsten held four times for veterinarians that were part of the PiR-DAP program. The other one was held during the lustrum meeting of the the Dutch Society for large ruminant Veterinarians and dealt with the value of the veterinary practitioner for dairy farms http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/value-of-veterinary-services
The coming years are going to be interesting years for the veterinary profession, that is one thing that is clear.
Currently, at least in the Dutch veterinary world, there is much uncertainty and discussion about the future. Dutch dairy farms are growing rapidly in seize and that means the attitude of dairy farmers is changing. Dairy farmers are less and less people that accept what you say, but are becoming more and more people that work in partnerships. And being a vet in that changing environment is a challenging task.
Veterinarians have to adapt to that new situation. In my opinion, herd health management programs should move beyond the classic monthly farm visits for pregnancy checks and talks about production records. Tailor made programs should be created to meet the farmers requirements around dairy cattle health. Requirements might differ between farmers and veterinarians should move away from the "one seize fits all approach". Modern cattle veterinary practice is about making life of farmers with regard to animal health easier. The costs and benefits of the offered programs become more important, although that is not the only decision criterium of the farmers. Veterinarians should develop "tools" that can be used in herd health management programs, especially when you want to distinguish yourself from your colleague-competitors (other vet practises or other advisors) on the farm advisory market. In the Netherlands standard tools, based on MPR data are offered in the PiR-DAP program (http://www.pir-dap.nl/) and are a great support for herd health programs.
Although I belief that herd health management programs are effective, there has not been much research done. In the old days (1970's) a very interesting project has been carried out on herd health programs (published in a series of papers by Jan Sol et al in 1984 in the Veterinary Quarterly) where it was shown in a great intervention study that herd health programs did have an important effect on the profitability of dairy farms. One of my own MSc theses showed that the beneficial effects did not sustain when the project was ended and herd health management programs were not continued (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016758779290035E).
It is great that last year Marjolein Derks started her work as PhD at the department of Farm Animal Health of Utrecht University (financed by CRV) on the effectivity of herd health programs and the possibility to develop new support tools.
Last year I gave two presentations aimed at dairy cattle veterinarians. One on the specific demands of larger dairy farms for herd health management programs (at least my vision on those demands): http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/2011-0329-pir-dap-bijeenkomsten held four times for veterinarians that were part of the PiR-DAP program. The other one was held during the lustrum meeting of the the Dutch Society for large ruminant Veterinarians and dealt with the value of the veterinary practitioner for dairy farms http://www.slideshare.net/henkhogeveen/value-of-veterinary-services
The coming years are going to be interesting years for the veterinary profession, that is one thing that is clear.
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