Improvement of mink management by systematic operation programmes on the WWW

A Systematic Operation Programme (SOP) is a set of all relevant routines and operations for the management in a certain part or period of production. The management is systematised by describing a set of observed situations that release actions, and a set of periods or intervals in which actions should be carried out. The need for transfer of knowledge on mink management is high because the number of new farmers varies greatly, experience is gained slowly and simple errors may affect the total annual production. Mink production is characterised by annual cycles of highly different production periods with regard to length, management and labour intensity. Therefore, experience in each production period is gained slowly and stepwise. To meet the needs for transfer of knowledge, SOPs for the short labour intensive mating and nursing periods have been developed. The SOPs have been distributed and tested in printed versions for two seasons, and are now beeing made available on the WWW.