The Bull Fertility Evaluation and Reporting App for Vets.

The idea for VSR and The BullApp came from my frustration at mislaying bits of paper, filling out numerous repetitive boxes in Certificates, missing deadlines for handing certs to farmers, forgetting to put the data into a spreadsheet for auditing, and being a bit disorganised, etc – you probably know where I am coming from here!

Since qualifying far too many years ago I’ve worked in mixed practice and then as a farm vet, becoming interested in bull work in 2008 after attending a BCVA training day. I have always found it interesting and slowly built up some experience but I definitely don’t claim to be an expert in any way. During my time on the BCVA Board I organised several successful and “realistic” on farm CPD days in Devon.

Designing The BullApp idea then became an interesting theoretical challenge and progressed from there, albeit slowly due to Covid and then Brexit taking up too much of my life, until BCVA Congress 2021 at Celtic Manor which was the opportunity (and also a deadline – always useful to focus the mind!) to demo a working prototype to colleagues and gather some feedback. To my great relief the comments were all extremely positive.

In addition to the obvious benefits of streamlining the on-farm recording, facilitating the morphology counting, storing and using data effectively and automating the certification work while encouraging standardised reporting; VSR also offers huge potential to use the data generated for clinical audits, and develop a CPD process to improve standards and consistency amongst all of us doing fertility work.

It has also always been important to me that the system will appeal to all vets working in this field, be they alone or members of a large practice group, and I believe this has been achieved.

My partners in the venture are Merlin Vets , who have shown an inordinately large amount of blind faith and trust in what was initially a somewhat obscure idea, and offered much wise advice along the way.

Robert Anderson is one of the UK’s most experienced vets in this field and is well respected globally. Robert recently retired from general farm practice but still has an appreciation of the daily issues facing working vets.

David Taylor is his fellow director in Merlin Vets, also with first hand experience of practice life, fertility work and business.

in addition, Merlin Vets are the UK and Ireland agent for Lane Manufacturing and Pulsator Equipment, so they literally know your kit inside out.

Roger Cunningham

BVETMED CERTBSP MRCVS