Investigation of the Working Relationships of Ontario Veterinarians and their Small Ruminant Clients with a Focus on Provision of Postmortem Services

Abstract

There is a lack of morbidity and mortality information pertaining to adult small ruminants in Canada. The Small Ruminant Adult Mortality (SRAM) system provided support to veterinarians performing on-farm postmortems of adult small ruminants, to enhance disease surveillance and improve provision of health management advice. A novel animal health surveillance evaluation framework was developed and used to evaluate the SRAM system. The evaluation indicated that the SRAM system has great value for improving diagnosis of on-farm postmortems and for building veterinarian-producer relationships. Veterinarian and producer perceptions of health management and their working relationships were also explored, with the aim of improving use of veterinary services, including animal health surveillance-based services. Results indicated there were several barriers that prevented producers from using veterinary services. Future work should focus on developing interventions to reduce these barriers, to support the improvement of animal health surveillance and growth of the Canadian small ruminant industries.