Practical data skills for the farm animal vet

Abstract

Background: While farm animal veterinarians receive extensive training in the diagnosis and treatment of individual animals, population medicine or ‘herd health’ has also become commonplace in modern production animal veterinary medicine. Clinicians are increasingly using routinely collected farm data to identify epidemiological patterns in order to implement preventive health management changes on farm. As such, data handling and statistical analysis techniques are becoming more important in farm practice. While data handling and statistical techniques can initially be challenging to learn, a relatively small investment in time spent learning can dramatically reduce the time spent analysing farm outcomes, and provide a useful evidence base on which to base on‐farm management decisions.Aim of the article: This article provides a practical guide to data skills for the production animal vet, briefly covering basic descriptive statistics and graphical representations of data. It also includes further examples of more advanced data analysis techniques, such as statistical modelling and the use of coding language.