Oliver Radcliffe
One notebook, kept honestly
Every farm has at least three record-keeping systems. There's the one that was set up with good intentions in January — a folder, a spreadsheet, perhaps an app on a phone that's now cracked and out of charge. There's the one the inspector would like to see. And there's the one that actually gets used: a scuffed notebook on the windowsill in the porch, with a biro attached by a bit of baler twine.
The trick isn't to feel guilty about the first two. It's to make the third one good enough to do the job. A single notebook, kept honestly and filled in as you go, will carry you through a animal health inspection far better than a half-finished spreadsheet. What follows is how I'd set one up for a smallholding or a modest fell farm — sheep, a few cattle, a handful of fields.
Livestock movements
Movements are the backbone of your records, and they're the first thing anyone will ask to see. Write them down the same day. Not the same week, and certainly not when the form arrives. For each movement, note:
- The date the animals actually moved — not the date you got round to the paperwork
- Identification: individual tag numbers for cattle, or flock mark and number for a group of sheep
- Where they came from and where they went, including holding numbers, the market, or common land
- The reason: sale, tupping, tack sheep arriving, bringing the ewes home off the fell for clipping
For a hefted flock, gather dates matter too. If ewes go up to the common or come down for scanning, that's a movement worth a line. When you're standing at a mart in Penrith trying to remember which forty ewes went to the tup on the 14th, that line will save you an argument.
Medicine records
This is the section that gets examined hardest, and the one where vagueness costs you. Write it as the syringe is drawn, not afterwards. For every treatment, record:
- Date and time
- Which animals — tag numbers, or the group and head count
- Product name, batch number and expiry date
- Dose given, route, and injection site if relevant
- The withdrawal period, and the date the animal becomes clear
- Who administered it
The withdrawal period is where a little extra care pays off. Work out the clear date and write it in the margin in capitals. That single habit stops you sending a lamb to slaughter a fortnight early, and it's the sort of thing that turns a stressful phone call into a two-minute answer. Keep the medicine tub or cupboard tidy and check the notebook against it once a month — old bottles and missing batch numbers are a common and easily avoided problem.
Fields, grazing and the jobs that shape next year
A field diary is quieter than the livestock pages, but it's where the useful thinking happens. Give each field the name you actually use — Top Intack, Long Mire, the bit behind the barn — because that's the name you'll recognise at nine o'clock at night in the rain. Then note:
- Grazing moves: what's on the field, when they went in, when they came out
- Topping, harrowing, rolling, chain harrowing the pasture
- Fertiliser and slurry: product, rate, date, and the field it went on
- Fencing, gates, drains, wall repairs — and roughly what it cost
- Weather worth remembering: the week the beck came over, the dry spell in June
After two or three years, this section stops being a chore and starts being a farm memory. You can see which field consistently runs out of grass first, which one recovers slowly, and whether that wet corner is getting wetter. That's the difference between managing and guessing.
Making it work on a busy day
The best system is the one that survives lambing, haytime and a fortnight of rain. A few practical things help:
- Keep the notebook where the work happens — by the door, in the quad bike box, in the lambing shed
- Use a waterproof cover and a pencil in the wet months; biro freezes and smears
- Start each page with the date, even if it's just a line for the field and a line for the stock
- Photograph the pages at the end of each month and keep the pictures somewhere sensible
- Once a week, sit down with a brew and tidy the loose ends — the tag number you scribbled, the batch number you meant to look up
It takes ten minutes. It's a far better use of a Sunday evening than hunting through pockets for a movement form in March.
What good records give you back
It's easy to think of record-keeping as something done for other people — the vet, the inspector, the auctioneer. In truth, the biggest beneficiary is you. Clear records mean you can answer a question about a ewe's treatment without ringing anyone. You can prove where a batch of lambs came from. You can walk into a TB test or a welfare visit with the notebook open and your story straight.
And beyond the compliance, there's the quieter value. You can see which ewes repeatedly lose lambs, which field earns its keep, whether the smallholding is actually paying for itself. Decisions get better when the evidence is written down rather than half-remembered. One notebook, kept honestly, is enough to do all of that. Start it today, and don't worry about making it pretty.
