Animal Health Officer - Scotland in Ayr

As a field-based Animal Health Officer (AHO) your duties will include, but not limited to the following:

• blood sampling of livestock species including cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry (after suitable training)
• collecting blood samples from bTB breakdown cattle herds, including suckler, beef and dairy herds
• conducting documentation inspections on animal identification, animal movement, breeding, medicine and other written or electronic records for audit and disease control and surveillance purposes
• collecting samples for National Surveillance Schemes including feed samples from farms, feed mills and feed merchants
• collecting samples and information for disease surveys
• managing compliance inspections for premises handling animal by-products e.g., rendering plants, composting sites, hunt kennels and abbatoirs
• playing an active part in contingency planning so the agency is able to respond to outbreaks of exotic notifiable disease and other emergencies
• undertaking allocated rostered out of hours on-call duties to deal with incidents and to support disease outbreak reports
• participating as directed, to contribute to the control and the eradication of the disease including taking part in rosters for detached duty to other parts of Great Britain during outbreaks of notifiable disease
• working with a diverse team, both locally and across Great Britain, including other technical colleagues, veterinary surgeons and scientists during notifiable disease outbreaks

Support and Training

All successful candidates will be provided with an extensive programme of training and support as part of their induction into working with APHA. Some training will involve travel and overnight stays.

APHA appreciates the varying level of experiences and skills successful candidates will hold on joining the agency. Training material is designed to ensure all new entrants, to APHA, build suitable confidence and competencies to deliver the work.

New AHO staff will be part of regional, country and GB wide teams who will be provided with widespread support on all facets of APHA work.