Show employees why following protocols matters

Do you know how your employees are administering treatments to your cows? Are they following protocols? How do you know?

Dairies are a place of perpetual motion. It can be difficult to find time for meetings to make sure everyone is staying on the same page with treatment protocols. To avoid this problem, you need to stress protocol compliance during employee training and explain why it’s important.

Why compliance matters and what it means

Before talking about protocol compliance, make sure you understand what it means. Complying with treatment protocols helps protect Dairy Wellness by:

• Ensuring a full course of therapy, which offers the best chance of recovery
• Decreasing the chance of additional expenses from treatment failure
• Avoiding violative drug residues

Those are important goals to the dairy. The key aspects of protocol compliance are:

• Keeping accurate records
• Working with your veterinarian
• Using the correct treatment
• Giving the correct dosage amount
• Using the correct route of administration
• Treating at the correct time and for the correct duration

 How to put compliance into action

When training your employees to comply with treatments, just telling them to follow protocols might not be effective. Your employees want healthy cows. If they think the cow is not responding to a protocol, they might alter the treatment to something they think will work, without realizing they could do more harm than good.

 During training, explain why the action is important before explaining how to do it. Let’s use the example of training your employees to be compliant with protocols.

• Why: Following written treatment protocols ensures Dairy Wellness by keeping animals healthy, helping the dairy be successful and producing quality food.
• How: Give effective treatments by following written protocols and/or following veterinarians’ directions.

Helping your employees understand why compliance is important will help them remember how to be compliant.

Zoetis is here to help you, too. We’ve developed a poster that you can use to keep protocol compliance top of mind with your employees. Visit AvoidResidues.com for a “Seven tips for proper drug treatments” poster and other materials to help your dairy stay compliant and avoid drug residues.