Syndromic surveillance seeks to detect disease occurrence before clinical diagnosis is available at the population level. Early disease detection in an outbreak event improves response time and helps limit the spread of disease. Monitoring submissions to a diagnostic laboratory for increases in certain test requests or positive test results is an established method of syndromic surveillance. As of May 2011 the general submission form for the Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) includes a check list of syndromes, as part of the clinical history. Thus, clinician selected syndromes can be monitored in addition to test request and results. In this study, the use of the new submission form in bovine “contract cases” is compared to the results of a 2009 pilot study, which investigated the utility of categorizing clinical history into syndromes post-hoc. The general trend of syndromes and test results is established. The relationship between specific syndrome classifications and test results are examined. The development of the syndrome check list and the advantages to utilizing a syndromic surveillance system are discussed. Finally, recommendations for syndromic surveillance at the AHDC are provided.