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Guidance

Apply for funding to improve the health and welfare of cattle, pigs and sheep

Apply for funding for a vet to visit your farm to reduce endemic diseases and conditions, increase animal productivity and improve animal welfare.

Updates to this page

From:
Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and Rural Payments Agency
Published:
19 June 2024
Last updated:
25 September 2025
Show all updates

  1. Changed link to a start now button. Moved some content to above the start now button.

  2. Added detail about needing to apply for the agreement to the warning text.

  3. Restructure of the page with some content moved to other pages

  4. Edit to make the timing content for reviews and follow-ups more concise.

  5. Added information and edited existing information to support applying and claiming for more than one species. Some corrections to punctuation.

  6. Update to emphasise that you must have an agreement in place. Update to include the final date that claims can be made. Correction for clarity to show the follow-ups are now on all cattle. Some minor corrections to fix service names.

  7. Information about persistently infected (PI) hunt updates and endemic disease follow-ups for dairy cattle added. Clarity on who should do the vet visit if the farmer is also a vet added.

  8. We have added more detailed information about the agreements that must be in place and what will happen during the vet visits.

  9. We have added a link to video guidance to help you apply.

  10. Clarification added in 'Timing of reviews and follow-ups', for farmers who have completed a review in the old annual health and welfare review: You must wait until 10 months after your last review before doing a new review under this agreement. This still applies if your review claim was rejected.

  11. First published.

Applies to England

Start an application

This service forms part of the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway. It will provide payments to livestock keepers to fund farm visits by vets. 

Funding is also available for poultry biosecurity reviews.

To get funding, you must apply for an Improve Animal Health and Welfare (IAHW) agreement. Before you start any actions from reviews or follow-ups, make sure you have applied and the agreement is in place.

You’ll need your Rural Payments service customer reference number (CRN) and password to sign in. Applying takes about 5 minutes.

Start now

About improve animal health and welfare

There are 2 parts to the service:

  • animal health and welfare review
  • endemic disease follow-up

You can choose the vet you want to do these. The review and follow-up are not an inspection or audit.

If you are a farmer who is a vet, you cannot carry out your own visit, you must use another vet.

As part of your IAHW agreement, you can have up to: 

  • 3 reviews on any number of herds or flocks of one or more species from the list of eligible livestock – beef cattle, dairy cattle, pigs or sheep 

  • 3 follow-ups on any number of herds or flocks of one or more species from the list of eligible livestock – beef cattle, dairy cattle, pigs or sheep

The service ends on 19 June 2027. Your review and follow-up visits must be done by then. You must submit your claims by 19 September 2027.

Animal health and welfare review

During a review, the vet will:

  • test for endemic disease (for cattle and pigs)
  • test the effectiveness of medicines to treat worms (for sheep)
  • advise you on how to improve animal health and welfare
  • advise you on how to increase animal productivity
  • discuss any other topics that are important to you

After the vet has completed a review, you can choose to have an endemic disease follow-up.

Endemic disease follow-up

You can only do a follow-up on a herd or flock after you have done a review. You may also prefer to claim successfully for the review before you organise a follow-up. The follow-up must be on the same species as the review.

During a follow-up, the vet will:

  • do more in-depth disease testing based on your review results (cattle and pigs) 
  • do disease testing or condition assessments based on farm health priorities (sheep) 
  • do a biosecurity assessment

The vet will also advise you on further steps to:

  • control and prevent disease
  • improve animal health and welfare
  • improve animal productivity

Follow-ups must be on the same species as the review.

Get help with your application

For more help with applying for this service, you can watch this video. It shows you how to apply and how to find all the information farmers and vets need.

Contact the Rural Payments Agency if you:

  • cannot apply online
  • have a question about your application

You can scan and attach documents in an email and send them to us. Or you can post them to our address. You should:

  • use ‘IAHW’ in the email subject heading
  • put your SBI and IAHW agreement number on everything you send to us

Write to:

Rural Payments Agency

PO Box 352

Worksop

S80 9FG

Email: ruralpayments@defra.gov.uk.

Telephone: 03000 200 301 Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5pm, except public holidays.

Find out about call charges.

Funding to improve animal health and welfare: guidance for farmers and vets

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