A health log is cheaper than reconstructing last month

When the same diarrhoea returns every rains, or lambs die in week one, you need the trail — not a memory of “we treated something.”

What belongs on the animal or flock

• Births: date, dam, number, and problems.
• Illness: signs, date, what you did.
• Treatments and vaccinations: product, batch if you have it, next due date.
• Deaths and unexplained losses.
• Feed or housing changes that line up with a problem.

Use health events as the register. A first-aid kit is for early response: clean wounds, keep the animal warm or cool, write signs, call for help. It is not a licence to diagnose from a chart in a book.

Keep a simple scoring habit on the daily walk: bright, dull, wounds, parasites. Problems become visible before they become expensive.

Medicine cabinet layout and food-animal withdrawal are covered in the farm medicine safety series — do not duplicate that job here.

In this series

• Walk the animals every day before you reach for medicine
• Quarantine arrivals; do not walk disease into the main group
• Some signs are not a wait-and-see
• Dry, clean, and ventilated beats a warm damp shed
• Parasites live in the paddock, not only in the bottle
• A health log is cheaper than reconstructing last month