Veterinary supervision of dairy farms in the Netherlands - What the veterinarian think about participating and non-participating farmers

Dairy herd health and production management programmes are being used incre asingly more often, also in the Netherlands. However, little is known about the rationale behind the farmers' decision to participate or not to partic ipate. This paper reports the results of a questionnaire survey among cattl e practitioners about why they thought farmers did or did not participate i n these programmes, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of such prog rammes, the extent to which the respective farming ai eas were represented in the programines, anti the reasons why farmers stopped participation in t he programme. Furthermore, the ways in which the practitioners try to convi nce the non-participating farmers to join the programme were addressed. The future of daily herd health programmes in the context of quality assurance programmes and the way the farmers think about these developments were dis cussed by the practitioners.