Hi. My name's Paul Mercer. I'm a dairy farm manager here at Givaghi Gold. I'm the PICA delegate on this farm. We milk 400 cows and we've just started welcoming a few calves on-farm in the last couple of weeks. We're expecting 400 calves this year. It is important for us and NAIT to have lifetime traceability. I register my calves in NAIT through using the MINDA live app on my cellphone. Once I've done that I get the confirmation email from NAIT to say that it's been recorded. After tagging, I go into my MINDA app and record it. [Close-up of process on his cellphone.] Going into the calving, record calving, put in the date, we're looking up the number of the cow (number 86), she had a heifer. The calf will be reared as heifer reared number 16. It's dairy. It's at our NAIT location. The cow had no assistance. And we're finished.
One thing to remember with NAIT, is that by default all calves born on the dairy farm are recorded as dairy. When you're going to sell them or rear them on for beef, you need to change them to a beef production type in NAIT.
Lifetime traceability is important to me, because if there's an outbreak you can trace it back, you can find out where it started, you can prevent it, you can find out what the cause was so it doesn't happen again and affect our businesses. Recording all your animals in NAIT gives us the ability to trace all our animals back to the source and helps with our biosecurity for New Zealand.
Buying and selling calves
To ensure they can be traced, you must tag, and register in NAIT all newborn calves within 180 days of birth or before they move off your farm — whichever comes first.
When you buy or sell calves your NAIT and TBfree obligations are the same as for other cattle, although some things are helpful to know.
If you're buying calves
Confirm with the seller:
- that they have completed an Animal Status Declaration (ASD) form — you'll receive this at the point of sale
- that the calves are tagged and registered in NAIT
- what their TB status is.
When the calves arrive on your property, you need to:
- read their NAIT tag numbers, visually or with a scanner
- create or confirm the receiving movement in NAIT within 48 hours of the end of the day you received the calves.
If you're selling calves
Before you send your calves off-farm, make sure they're tagged correctly and registered in NAIT. If you are using birth tags, applying these in numerical order can make it easier to register the calves in NAIT.
All calves must be:
- fitted with a NAIT tag before they are 180 days old - the tag should be in the centre of the right ear between the two veins
- registered in the NAIT system within 7 days of tagging
- tagged and registered before their first movement off farm.
It's an offence not to tag and register your calves within these timeframes.
Some animals are exempt from tagging. Bobby calves under 30 days of age going directly to slaughter from their birth farm are exempt and don't need to be tagged. If they move to another property then you must tag and register them first.
You also need to:
- prepare an ASD, which includes information about the TB status of your animals and a declaration to the livestock transporter
- find out the NAIT location number of the buyer
- create a sending movement in NAIT, within 48 hours of the end of the day they were sent (if you're sending through an accredited saleyard or meat processor they will record the movement for you).
If you’re moving animals from a Movement Control Area they will need to be pre-movement tested.
Sending to a saleyard
If you send calves to an accredited saleyard they will create the sending movement in NAIT on your behalf. You must still make sure the calves are tagged and registered.
Sending to a meat processor
Bobby calves under 30 days of age moved direct to slaughter from their birth farm are exempt from NAIT requirements to tag and register. Check with your meat processor about their requirements for accepting bobby calves.
All other calves over 30 days of age must be tagged and registered before they move.