I was just reading about Scat and her preps for her cats and that reminded me of something I have seen here yet - medical / vet records.

Medical & dental records - for each person in your household, you should make as complete a medical record as possible, not just the vaccinations (which should be brought up to date), but things like surgeries, illnesses in the past, chronic illnesses, allergies to meds and other things, etc. A copy should be where each person knows where it is. In my house I am the keeper of the records and I am going to make each adult person (and almost adult) responsible for knowing about their own history and where their records are. I would add a picture to these records as well.

Vet records - We have a farm and therefore lots of animals. I have been somewhat remiss on keeping their records up to date, but I can certainly see a great deal of value in doing that. Animals like cats, dogs, horses should have rabies shots and records of it. Cows should be vaccinated against brucellosis (can't spell it right), as this is a disease that can be passed on to humans (usually a small metal tag in the ear.) All vaccination records should be kept on all animals. There are regular herd records that should be kept as well - like when an animal last gave birth, when it was probably impregnated, diseases, other notes (like whether it rejected it's young), etc. If you have registered animals, definitely keep those records with the vet / herd records.

I mention all of this about the animals, because many are new to keeping animals and may not have thought about it. I never used to keep records because I had so few animals, but now that we have so many I can't remember all of it. I have the vet bills to show me what vaccinations where given and when and the day book for all of the rest, so now I just need to sit down and sort it into the individual animals. A picture of each animal with identifying marks / tags should be added as this will make things easier.

There are other types of records as well that we all have been reading about, but I am going to let others that can speak to those better than I can add their comments.

-- Beckie (sunshine_horses@yahoo.com), July 25, 1999

Answers

Excellent comments- If I might add a small suggestion -DUPLICATE records! What happens if something happens to the (farm)house?

-- Chuck's wife (rienzoo@en.com), July 25, 1999.