Understanding barriers to following advice: Evaluation of an advisory service from dairy farmers' perspectives.

In dairy herd health medicine, the success of consultation is sometimes limited as farmers do not always implement given advice. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate a consultation performed during a study in the northwest of Germany and thereby to detect barriers that hinder farmers with long lasting problems in herd health from implementing veterinary advice. Six to twelve months after a non-recurring extensive herd health analysis and consultation, 38 farmers were interviewed by phone. Nearly all farmers were content with the farm visit, and 79% of the farmers stated that they had implemented at least some of the advice. This shows that farmers appreciated this service in general and were willing to follow advice. Even though the results cannot be generalized, factors that could be considered by advisors to improve the success of consultation were detected: Reasons as to why the advice was rejected were mostly related to farmers' expectations. Implementing only some of the advice was caused by a lack of time, self-discipline, money, and a lacking farm successor. Factors that pleased farmers were friendliness of the study veterinarians, in-depth examinations, handling of cows, good advice and how well organized the farm visit was. Factors that displeased the farmers were usually indicated only by one farmer each. Other factors influencing the success of consultation were the teamwork with the practising veterinarian, the self-evaluation of the farmers and the desire of the farmers for a single reason for the herd health problems.