Blood testing

The Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Service offer a number of different blood tests

 

Advantages of blood testing

DHHPS metabolic profile handout (6.43 MB PDF)

 

 Dairy Cow Tests

Dry Cow Tests

Beef Suckler Tests

Sheep Tests - Pre Lambing and Pre Mating

 

DHHPS forms

When submitting a DHHPS metabolic profile - Dairy, Dry Cow or Beef test.  Please download an completed a Sheet 1 (farm background information)  and a Sheet 3 (details of the individual animals and their ration)

Sheet 1 - Metabolic profile form - Farm background information (required for first metabolic profile) (109.08 KB PDF)

 

Sheet 2 - monthly herd health recording form - not required for metabolic profiles

 

Sheet 3 - Blood sample input form - animal and feed details (116.75 KB PDF)

 

Instructions for blood sampling (153.73 KB PDF)

 

For all sheep tests please download and complete the Sheep test input form

 

Sheep test input forms (116.16 KB PDF)

 

Price list

 

 

 

Blood tubes required

• "One-off" or first member test. Please submit two Lithium Heparin 'green' tubes and a Fluoride-Oxalate tube from each cow.
• Existing member test. Please submit one Lithium Heparin 'green' and one Fluoride-Oxalate tube from each cow.
• Pre-lambing sheep test: please submit one Lithium Heparin 'green' tube for each sheep.
• Pre-mating (trace element) testing: please submit Two Lithium Heparin 'green' tubes from each sheep.

(the second lithium heparin tube required for some tests is to facilitate the running of the GHSPx (selenium) assay in the laboratory)

Transport of samples

The Royal Mail (and all other postage services) have strict regulations regarding biological samples in the post.