This is the first paper to authors’ knowledge to explore sheep farmers’ opinions of current use of their veterinarian and whether sheep farmers view veterinarians as a route to add value to their farm business through flock health planning. There are few flock health schemes that survive unsubsidised (Osmond, 2009; personal communications) and it is not clear why this is the case and this paper sought to explore this issue from the farmers’ viewpoint.
A diverse range of male sheep farmers by age, flock size, type of sheep farming enterprise and geographical region were purposively selected to capture a range of opinions in the focus groups. Each opinion is qualitatively relevant and helps to understand how sheep farmers currently view the role of their veterinarian in the context of their farm. This qualitative approach is a valuable way to understand the diversity and depth of opinions of farmers on this topic (Yardley, 2008). We cannot quantify opinions, nor can we be confident that we have every opinion held by sheep farmers. Despite this, we consider that the approach used highlighted strong convergences within themes, theme saturation and similar opinions and has captured novel information that it is not possible to capture through quantitative questionnaire methodology. The aim and purpose of this type of qualitative research is to enhance understanding, enlarge insight and generate new hypotheses (Johnson, 1997 and Yardley, 2008).
Combining the comments, one overarching impression is that the sheep farmers in this study viewed themselves as experts in sheep farming and in particular of their own farm. They considered sheep farming complex and that the years of experience that they had gave them a unique understanding of farming sheep. In general, they viewed themselves as the ‘best’ person to understand how to manage their sheep and most had a view that the veterinarian (or any other outsider) had a limited contribution to make to their overall flock management. They used the wide range of free information to cherry pick what might be appropriate for their farm. There was no consensus of one good source of information but there was some quality control e.g. specifically highlighted in our discussions were that sponsored veterinary meetings were viewed with caution and a few farmers considered that veterinarians ‘needed’ to sell pharmaceuticals and so lacked independence. The farmers considered that whilst there are similarities across sheep farms each farm is unique and farmers have found their own farm specific solutions to manage their flock on their farm. This idea of uniqueness and complexity came through with the farmers’ desire for veterinarians who were also sheep farmers and a suggestion that very few veterinarians could be sufficiently expert to advise them.
The one veterinarian role accepted by all farmers in the study was to provide help during an unknown disease event that caused raised levels of morbidity or mortality. The farmers described this as ‘fire-fighting’ and viewed it as an economically costly event (animals died and they had to pay for veterinary time and pharmaceuticals) but one where veterinarians were uniquely qualified to assist. Once the cause of the disease and management was known the veterinarian had no further role to play, and subsequent outbreaks/endemic levels of the same disease would be managed by the farmer with minimal input from their veterinarian.
Outside this major role, most farmers in the focus groups considered that their veterinarian played a role in advising them on other diseases that occurred in their flock that were not emergencies. They generally obtained this advice free of charge either by telephone, visiting the practice premises or discussing their sheep when the veterinarian was visiting the farm for another purpose, such as tuberculosis testing of cattle. This was common practice and getting free advice was considered a reasonable behaviour.
When farmers were asked to consider using their veterinarian in an advisory role in flock health there was some acceptance of a useful role by a few farmers, with the veterinarians providing an ‘outside eye’. Generally, however, there was little understanding on how flock health planning might be done and farmers looked to veterinarians to provide a model. There were several barriers raised, most farmers did not consider that their veterinarian knew sufficient about farming sheep and non-disease aspects of production in general and about their flock and farm specifically and so was not in a position to offer advice. Once again this is the idea that sheep farming is very complex and each farm is unique. This could be a major hindrance to developing flock health plans, particularly in the absence of any productivity and health records which does indeed make a farm complex because of the unknown.
In addition, many sheep farmers had farmed sheep for the whole of their life as had their fathers and grandfathers and they wanted a veterinarian that they had known for many years. Farm animal practice in the UK is changing (Lowe, 2009), farm practices are merging and so there are more veterinarians per practice and veterinarians now move between practices gaining experience in several locations when they first qualify. It is increasingly unlikely that sheep farmers who have a veterinary visit once or twice per year will know the veterinarian visiting their farm. This difference between veterinarian and farmer generation time is likely to continue and our results indicate that some thought needs to be given on how to improve veterinarian farmer interactions if turn-over of veterinarians continues to be high. The issues highlighted in the current study of lack of interpersonal trust, confidence and consistency are also central to public trust in healthcare (Gidman et al., 2012) and congruent with the social theory of trust developed by Luhmann (1997). Luhmann's theory highlights the close and complex relationship that exists between trust, confidence and familiarity. Confidence can stimulate an individual's activities in situations of uncertainty and trust develops with familiarity, and familiarity is used by an individual to calculate risk. Thus farmers are more likely to develop trust in veterinarians as their experience of their veterinarian increases.
Where farmers had a positive view that their veterinarian could have wider input in the farm it was generally because the veterinarian had been proactive and offered health care packages, e.g. to monitor helminths to improve control. In these cases, the veterinarians were usually charging a low rate to gain uptake from farmers and it was not clear that farmers would have paid the full economic cost of the programmes.
This leads to another barrier highlighted by farmers, the cost of veterinary time–veterinary costs were considered to be high. However, when farmers were asked about the economics of their farm and whether they made money from their sheep, most did not record where or how they gained and lost income but considered that the single payment scheme was the only reason that they could continue to farm sheep. This guaranteed SPS income is ‘topped up’ by income from selling lambs.
A negative result of this financial support is that it reduces sheep farmers need to keep records and understand where flock income and expenditure arise. Only three farmers in 45 kept records which enabled them to evaluate the economics of their flock and identify where they gained and lost income. These are the same records that can be used to make decisions on flock management to improve income. Without these a flock health plan cannot be instigated because there are no baseline measurements to use to monitor the impact of management changes. If sheep farmers are unaware of their income, or do not link changes in flock management to increased income then many of the recommended health (Wassink et al., 2010b) and management (EBLEX, 2012) improvements promoted based on increased income will not be adopted.
The one flock manager with 1500 sheep who used a non-veterinary consultant was quite different from the other 44 farmers in the study who were responsible to no one for the management decisions they took. The ‘fully’ recorded large flock and external consultant model is similar to that used by the dairy and pig sectors but our results suggest it would not be appropriate for most sheep farmers currently.
Most farmers in the focus groups could not conceive paying a rate per sheep in the flock for external advice. One issue was that sheep flocks are generally small (less than 400 ewes) and so a rate per ewe that would provide e.g. four visits per year (£2000 was considered excessive). As the farmers highlighted, there are few role models of sheep farmers using a veterinarian as an advisor where the veterinarian adds to the farm profitability so this is a new concept for many of them.
Our results suggest that there is an impasse, veterinary input would cost money but sheep farmers currently, generally, do not consider that they would see financial benefit from this cost, partly because they do not keep records that could be used to measure the difference an advisor could make. Lack of production records and the view of SPS money as a subsidy for sheep farming might also explain the slow uptake of other new developments in the industry. The price of lamb in the UK in 2010 was double that of 2006 (EBLEX, 2012). Whilst some expenditure also increased, e.g. the price of purchased feed, sheep farmers could/should have had an increased income from 2006 to 2010. There has been some commentary that sheep farmers should/could have improved their flock with this extra income (EBLEX, Better Returns Programme) but few have done so.
There is a view that although the SPS secures a physically attractive and environmentally cleaner countryside that it reduces the sheep in