Under the relevant EU Commission regulation, census dates must be distributed throughout the year in such a way as to be representative of the entire year. The regulation also stipulates that census dates must be changed annually and that they cannot be announced until at least two weeks after their passing.
In order to ensure that farmers are made aware of each census date within the earliest possible time after its passing, while at the same time complying with the two week's waiting time, I issue a press release immediately after the two week period has passed. The press release is widely covered in the farming press both in newsprint and on radio.
In order to ensure that animal movement transactions that occur in the period immediately prior to each census date are updated on the CMMS animal database prior to the extraction for the preparation of the herd profiles, it is not possible to commence data extraction until a period of three weeks after a census date has elapsed. If data extraction were to commence any earlier, herd profiles issuing to farmers would be less accurate. The extraction of data for each census date involves the bringing together of some 6.5 million animal records for the printing of herd profiles by livestock unit value using eartag numbers and dates of birth.
