To ensure a safe working environment, it is necessary to be aware of the activities that take place on the farm and identify hazards which could cause a risk to health and safety. The risk may be to those working on the farm; those visiting, including contractors, other self-employed tradesmen or company salesmen; neighbours and other members of the public.
If there are children living on or regularly visiting the farm, include these in any risk assessments that you are undertaking. Hazards, which could be assessed as low risk to adults, can be of high risk to children and young people. The most vulnerable children are between one to five year old and 11 to 15.
Some activities may have a risk factor, but the scale of the risk could be so small that no major control measures need to be put in place. Other activities may have a greater risk factor and more detailed safety control measures need to be put into place.
What is a HAZARD?
What is a RISK?
Risk assessment is the process of looking at your business activities and identifying any hazards. Then putting in place any measures that would eliminate the risk or reducing its severity.
Here is a typical day in the life of a dairy farmer.
Note down all the potentials risks and explain how they could be reduced.
Shan Jones gets up at 5am and makes herself a cup of tea. She goes outside and fetches the cows with her sheepdog from the field. She notices a cow has just calved. She milks the cows and during the milking she has to treat a young heifer with an intra-mammary tube and injects another cow for lameness. She uses iodine spray to prevent mastitis and has set up the formalin footbath for the cows to walk through after milking. Before going to breakfast she puts a bulling cow in with the stock bull in his pen.
After breakfast she has to treat the young calves for ringworm and also has to move 20 straw bales through a narrow passage to the calf shed. She decides to muck out the pens with a hand fork and puts lime down before strawing the pen. She notices the straw is very dusty and mouldy.
The afternoon job is to spread fertilizer as it has just rained. Her farm has a few slopes and the tractor needs to be serviced. After using the front end loader to lift the 600kg bags into the hopper she sets off about the task.
After tea she starts milking again and after supper finishes by walking around the cows to check if any are bulling. As she does this she sprays the fields with a chemical herbicide to kill the weeds. She ends the day with a hot bath and a cup of hot chocolate.
Shan Jones gets up at 5am and makes herself a cup of tea. She goes outside and fetches the cows with her sheepdog from the field. She notices a cow has just calved. She milks the cows and during the milking she has to treat a young heifer with an intra-mammary tube and injects another cow for lameness. She uses iodine spray to prevent mastitis and has set up the formalin footbath for the cows to walk through after milking. Before going to breakfast she puts a bulling cow in with the stock bull in his pen.
After breakfast she has to treat the young calves for ringworm and also has to move 20 straw bales through a narrow passage to the calf shed. She decides to muck out the pens with a hand fork and puts lime down before strawing the pen. She notices the straw is very dusty and mouldy.
The afternoon job is to spread fertilizer as it has just rained. Her farm has a few slopes and the tractor needs to be serviced. After using the front end loader to lift the 600kg bags into the hopper she sets off about the task.
After tea she starts milking again and after supper finishes by walking around the cows to check if any are bulling. As she does this she sprays the fields with a chemical herbicide to kill the weeds. She ends the day with a hot bath and a cup of hot chocolate.