Creating a Veterinary Protocol
How to author, sign, and assign a mastitis treatment protocol on the Farm Medix platform, and what your farmers see once it's live.
💻 📱 Works the same on phone or desktop
1. What a vet protocol does
A vet protocol translates your mastitis management expertise into a set of rules the farm can act on immediately, whether or not a diagnostic result is available.
✅ Once assigned to a farm, farmers always know what to do when they receive a diagnostic result or face a mastitis case, with or without a diagnostic.
✅ Farmers see the corrective actions to take, whether treatment is required, which product to use, how many doses, and when the animal can safely return to the vat.
✅ Every protocol is a unique, sign-off document between you and that farm. You remain in control at all times: the platform carries your clinical decisions to the farm, it doesn't make them for you.
✅ Farmers can reach you directly through the chat function, tagging the specific animal or test in question, so questions arrive with full context.
Structurally, a protocol is a set of recommended responses organised by pathogen and clinical status (clinical and sub-clinical responses differ), plus two grade-based fallback rules for use before a pathogen is known.
2. The Protocols page
This is your home base: every protocol you own, every farm copy, and every Farm Medix baseline, in one place.
Mastitis Protocols page · My Protocols tab
Three tabs
My Protocols
Protocols you've authored or adopted. This is your working copy, editable, signable, and the source you assign to farms.
Farms Protocol
The live copy assigned to each individual farm. Editing a farm's copy here affects only that farm.
Master Protocols
Farm Medix's published, evidence-based baseline, reviewed by NZ dairy vets. Read-only until you adopt it as a starting point (see below).
Four stat tiles
Add
Start a new protocol from scratch.
Protocols
How many protocol documents you currently own, across all statuses.
Signed
How many of your protocols are signed and ready to assign or already assigned.
Assigned
How many farm copies exist across your entire caseload.
3. Starting a protocol
There are three ways in. All three land you in the same editable protocol document.
Recommended for a new client
Adopt the Farm Medix baseline
From the Master Protocols tab, click Use as baseline on the Farm Medix Master Mastitis Protocol. This creates your own editable copy under My Protocols, pre-populated with an evidence-based starting point you can customise.
Common for a returning client
Carry forward a past protocol
Duplicate a protocol from last season, last year, or an earlier visit, from My Protocols or Farms Protocol, and use that signed copy as your starting point instead. This keeps your established approach as the foundation, so you're reviewing what's changed rather than rebuilding it. See Managing your protocols for how duplicating works.
Alternative
Start from scratch
Click Add > New Protocol from the Protocols page. Every field starts blank and you build the protocol rule by rule.
Master Protocols tab · adopting the Farm Medix baseline
Why start from the baseline
The Farm Medix baseline is reviewed by NZ dairy vets and pre-loaded with medicine choices, doses, and withholding periods for common pathogens. Adopting it as a baseline still gives you a fully editable copy, you review each pathogen rule and adjust anything to suit your own clinical approach before signing.
All commonly used mastitis medicines are already loaded in the platform's medicine catalogue, which Farm Medix maintains, so you're choosing from a vetted list rather than entering products manually.
Medicine catalogue behind every protocol, showing ACVM number, route, and withholding periods
4. Anatomy of a protocol
Whichever way you started, you land on the same protocol editor. Here's what each part does.
Protocol editor · top strip, immediate treatment by grade, pathogen-specific rules
Top strip
Bulk Apply NSAID
Applies one anti-inflammatory to every clinical rule in the protocol in one action, copying that product's label course defaults where available. A fast way to standardise pain relief across all pathogens before you fine-tune individual rules.
Save / PDF
Save keeps your edits. PDF generates a downloadable copy for your records or to email to a client.
Sign / Re-sign
Records your clinical approval. See Signing the protocol below, including an important note on what happens if you edit a protocol after it's signed.
Add your heading
Two presumptive rules, used before a pathogen is confirmed, for a farmer who is treating on presentation and may or may not sample at all.
Grade 1-2 (mild / moderate)
Milk changes, or a hot or swollen quarter. Used when a farmer treats without sampling, or as interim cover while a result is pending. If no sample is ever taken, this rule is the entire treatment for that case.
Grade 3 (severe / systemic)
The cow is systemically sick (fever, off feed, down). Every Grade 3 case starts here immediately, the moment a farmer records a Grade 3 episode, regardless of whether a sample will ever be taken.
How grade-based and pathogen-specific rules relate
A culture is never guaranteed. Plenty of cases are treated purely by clinical grade and never sampled at all, in which case the grade-based rule is the complete treatment, not a placeholder for something else. Any case, at any grade, can be followed by a culture and its matching pathogen-specific rule, but that's optional rather than automatic.
Grade 3 is the one exception worth remembering: it always starts with the Grade 3 protocol first, immediately, whether or not a sample is ever taken. A diagnostic may follow afterwards, or may not; if a result does come back, the matching pathogen-specific rule then applies from that point.
Pathogen-specific rules
Applied once a pathogen is confirmed by the lab or entered from an external result. Use the Clinical / Sub-clinical toggle to switch which rule set you're viewing, then click the pencil icon on any pathogen tile to edit its rule.
5. Editing a rule
Pathogen tiles and the two grade tiles all open the same style of editor: first-line response, and, at your discretion, an escalation response.
First-line response
Your first line of action to support the animal. Every first-line response, and every escalation response where you choose to define one, is built from the same three fields:
✅ Antibiotic: choose the medicine, number of doses, and interval. Course length, and milk and meat withholding periods, populate automatically from the medicine catalogue.
✅ Anti-inflammatory: the same structure as above, or set to None if no anti-inflammatory is indicated.
✅ Additional actions: add to cull list, segregate (with a choice of hospital mob, milk-last Staph mob, or milk-last other), dry-off the affected quarter(s), or select No action when that's the correct call.
First-line response · antibiotic
First-line response · anti-inflammatory and additional actions
Escalation response
Used if first-line treatment doesn't resolve the case. It has the same three fields as first-line, plus a free-text failure trigger field where you describe what should prompt escalation, for example "clinical signs persist at recheck or same-pathogen relapse within the relapse window." Escalation is available on pathogen rules and on both grade rules alike, including for cases that are never cultured. Whether to define one, on any given rule, is entirely your clinical call, same as everything else in the protocol.
Escalation is a farmer decision, not an automatic step
The platform never escalates a case on its own. Moving from first-line to escalation is a judgement call the farmer makes, often after talking to you, based on the failure trigger you've defined. Write that trigger clearly, since it's the guidance the farmer will be reading in the moment.
Escalation response · failure trigger and second-line antibiotic
Escalation additional actions and the farmer-facing "why" text
Farmer-facing "why" text
A free-text field at the bottom of every rule where you record the clinical reasoning behind your choice, for example a reference to a specific trial or a stewardship note. This text is shown to the farmer alongside the rule, so write it as you would explain the decision directly to them.
Grade rules use the same fields as pathogen rules
Editing Grade 1-2 or Grade 3 opens the same antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, and additional-actions structure as a pathogen's first-line response, and the same escalation option described above. Build out an escalation step here if you want a defined second-line response ready for an untested case that doesn't resolve; leave it blank if you'd rather handle that at the time, case by case.
Edit Grade 1-2 (mild / moderate)
Edit Grade 3 (severe / systemic)
Mixed cultures
When a diagnostic result returns more than one organism, the farmer is asked which one to treat as the baseline for their response. Each organism may need its own treatment, so the recommended action plan updates for whichever one they select. Your individual pathogen rules are what populate each option, there's nothing extra to configure on your side.
Farmer view when a diagnostic returns a mixed culture
6. Signing the protocol
Signing is what makes a protocol usable by a farm. Nothing reaches a farmer until it's signed.
First-line response
Your first line of action to support the animal. Every first-line response, and every escalation response where you choose to define one, is built from the same three fields:
1. Click Sign Protocol (or Re-sign, if the protocol was already signed and you've since edited it).
2. Enter your first name, last name, and veterinary registration number.
3. Click Sign Protocol to confirm. The platform records your name, registration number, and a timestamp.
If the protocol has incomplete rules, you'll see a completeness warning (for example "12 completeness warnings remain") but you can still sign. Signing records your clinical approval of the protocol as it stands; it doesn't require every field to be filled in.
Sign Protocol modal, shown here on an already-signed protocol being edited
Editing a signed protocol takes it out of action
Once a protocol is signed and active, saving any further change immediately reverts it to draft. From that moment, the assigned farm has no active protocol until you click Re-sign. If you're making a quick edit to a live protocol, plan to re-sign in the same session, rather than leaving it mid-edit.
7. Assigning to farms
A signed protocol does nothing until it's assigned. Assigning copies it to the farm as their active protocol.
1. From My Protocols, click the assign icon on the protocol you want to send out.
2. Select one farm, several, or Select all farms.
3. Click Apply to [n] farms.
This is the fastest way to roll one protocol out to your whole caseload. Farms that already have a different protocol assigned are flagged (Assigned · updates) so you can see at a glance which ones you're about to overwrite.
Assign Protocol · bulk-select farms
Once assigned, each farm gets its own copy under the Farms Protocol tab. Editing a farm's copy there affects only that farm, your master copy under My Protocols is untouched, so this is also how you handle a farm that needs a customised variant.
Farms Protocol tab · one signed copy per farm
8. Managing your protocols
Five actions are available from the protocol list, via the icons on the right of each protocol card..
Edit
Opens the protocol editor to review or modify rules.
Duplicate confirmation
Share with team
Archive confirmation, note the wording: nothing is deleted outright
9. What the farm team sees
Once assigned, your rules run automatically. Here's the sequence a farmer follows for a single case.
1. A new mastitis case is entered, with or without a culture result. The animal appears under Actions with a Record Action button.
2. Clicking Record Action opens the case, showing an animal status summary (recent tests, treatments, affected quarters, chronicity score, relapse rate) at the top for context.
3. Below that, the Recommended action plan is pre-filled directly from your signed protocol for the pathogen and clinical status involved. A "Why this plan?" link lets the farmer see your farmer-facing "why" text.
4. Every field can be changed by the farmer if needed. Following your protocol as written is the recommended practice; if they deviate, the deviation is logged. Some pre-approved product substitutions don't count as a deviation.
5. The farmer confirms the milking interval for that cow (TAD or OAD) and roughly when treatment will start (next milking or last milking), an approximate fallback in case exact dose timing isn't logged.
5. They confirm to record the action, or tap Ask Vet first if something needs your input before they proceed.
Farm team view · Actions screen
Record Action · animal summary and recommended action plan, pulled from your protocol
Record Action · course details prefilled from the medicine catalogue, editable if the treatment given differs
Record Action · milking interval, start timing, notes, and the confirm / Ask Vet step
What "Incomplete protocol" means here
If the plan shown carries an Incomplete protocol tag, it means your signed protocol still has completeness warnings on that rule, not that anything has failed. The farmer can still proceed with the plan as configured; tightening up the rule on your end is optional, not blocking.
After recording: Active Care and dose tracking
Once an action is recorded, the case moves from Act Now to Active Care, the middle tile on the Actions screen. This is where the farm team logs each individual dose of every medicine the protocol prescribed.
Active Care tile · cases with treatment or withhold in progress
1. Opening a case under Active Care lists every prescribed medicine with its individual doses (Dose 1, Dose 2, Dose 3…) as separate buttons.
2. Farm staff press each dose button as it's actually given, and enter the time it was delivered, either Now or a different time if they're logging it after the fact.
3. That entered time is what sets the start of the withholding period, so accurate dose timing directly determines when the animal can safely return to the vat. Until a dose is confirmed, the course shows as presumed complete using the protocol's default schedule.
Active Care · dose buttons per medicine, with the Escalate case button top right
Confirming a single dose and its exact time
Dose timing sets the withhold, not the protocol default
The schedule from your protocol only holds until a real dose is confirmed. Encourage farms to log doses as they happen rather than in a batch later, since a late or backdated entry changes the calculated end of the milk withholding period.
An Escalate case button sits on this screen too. Clicking it opens the same interface used to record the first-line response, pre-loaded with the escalation rule you defined for that pathogen, so moving a case from first-line to escalation follows the identical recording pattern the farmer already knows.
10. Contacting the farmer
The relationship stays two-way at every step, not just at sign-off.
At any point, you or the farmer can start a chat and @ the specific animal or test in question, so the conversation carries full context from the outset. During a Record Action review, the farmer's Ask Vet button sends a ready-made message that automatically tags the case or protocol they have a question about.
Chat function · a farmer's treatment question, tagged to Cow No. 1
