Sound livestock husbandry

Regardless of the size of your livestock enterprise, keeping animals comes with requirements and responsibilities.

Producers play a vital role in maintaining the health and welfare of Victoria’s livestock to provide a quality product to consumers.

This is a quick list for you to consider when keeping livestock:

Register your property – all properties where livestock are kept need to obtain a property identification code (PIC), which accurately describes the property. This can be obtained for free through Agriculture Victoria.

Identify your cattle, sheep and goats – you need to identify individual cattle and sheep with an NLIS tag if you move them, sell them or have them processed at an abattoir.

Agriculture Victoria can advise how to order NLIS tags.

Use National Vendor Declarations – You will need a national vendor declaration (NVD) when you move livestock, sell livestock or have them processed at an abattoir. This assists with tracking the movements of livestock in the event of an exotic disease outbreak or a food safety scare.

The first step in obtaining an NVD is to become LPA accredited. To become LPA accredited, visit https://www.mla.com.au or call the LPA help desk on 1800 683 111.

Becoming LPA accredited – The Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) program is the Australian livestock industry’s on-farm assurance program covering food safety, animal welfare and biosecurity.

Although this list may appear onerous, it does provide a useful guide to requirements as well as protecting your livestock, your property and the livestock industry as a whole.

Seven separate but complementary elements make up the LPA program: property risk assessments; safe and responsible animal treatments; stock foods, fodder crops, grain and pasture treatments; preparation for dispatch of livestock; livestock transactions and movements; biosecurity; and, animal welfare.

Use national health declaration forms – In addition to the NVD, national health declaration forms are available for both cattle and sheep, which provide useful additional information when buying or selling livestock.

For further advice contact your Agriculture Victoria veterinary or animal health officer.