Ewen Ferguson

OABP/OABA

Guelph

April 29-2004

Maximizing Dairy Farm Efficiency

Troubleshooting Farm Problems with Records

Not always a problem-validation

Records will allow you to ask questions—not give answers

Be careful of snapshots—look for history

Records

Easily accessible

Easily understood

Meaningful—believable

Record Use

Monitor/troubleshootProduction/componentsHealth/cullingUdder healthReproductionBenchmarking—yourself/others

List generatorTo do lists

DC 305

How I use to monitor monthlyThings I look atHow I make it easy

How I use to troubleshootLook at exceptionsDevelop action points

Monthly overview:Things I look at

Monitor (monitor)Test day summary (tdsum1)“Feeding guide”Herd Repro Inventory305M graph (grrh305)Test day SCC (highscc)

DIM, peak, components, persistency

Working list: works well in tie stall barns

Making it easy

Linked reports!!!

Single keystroke

Office staff can generate reports

monitor!tdsum1!grrh305!highscc

Troubleshooting

Monitor/troubleshootProduction/componentsHealth/cullingUdder healthReproductionBenchmarking—yourself/others

Production/Components

Production: (over time / test day)Herd variationsLactation Group variationsIndividual variations

Components:High/Low BFRatio

Herd production trends over time (average)

Lactation group trends over time (average)

Production (test day)

Fat and Protein % over time (average)

Butterfat % (test day)

BF Ratio (test day)

Sub Clinical Ketosis (Duffield)

Gold Standard—Serum BHBA>1400umol/l

Ketotest100umol/L BHBA in milk (80% sens/spec)

Goal: <20% SCKLook at proportion of cows with a

protein: fat ratio <.75 on 1st DHI test and BCS > 4

High Risk Herds: >40% PFR <.75>10% BCS >4

% Butterfat distribution (graph pctf)

Health/Culling

Many health events can be recordedWe do a very poor jobMissing a large opportunity to

improve herd healthNeed to establish guidelines and

disease definitionNeed to standardize

EGRAPH

Events

Poorly utilizedGet CSR’s to enter (or on farm)

Close the loopGet advisor to discuss/commentVery powerful motivator

L %id age dim milk pctf pctp scc disp for (ec=14) (ec=15) dim<305 age>12 by stage\da

When and why do cows leave the herd?

25% of cows leaving dairy herds in Minnesota

between 1999 and 2001, did so in the 1st 60 days.

Godden 2003

Udder Health

Sub clinicalExcellent reportsPassive

ClinicalLike events—under utilizedActive—someone needs to record and enterNeed to standardize

OK

New Chronic

Cured

New<10%

Chronic <10%

OK 70%

Cured 70% Dry Cow

OK

Cured Chronic

New

Cured

Chronic

NewOK

Reproduction

Excellent reports but… under-utilized

Pregnancy rates not well understood

Need to enter accurate dataNeed to enter all breedings and

confirmed pregnanciesImportant to monitor

Repro Commands

Bredsum\ev50 for lact>0\d280“v” sets VWPReportGraphAdd “r” for regression graph (evr)

Reproduction Goals

50% pregnant by 3 cycles

75% pregnant by 6 cycles

<30% open after 10 cycles after VWP

98 5456

75 6579

50 75107

25 84178

When 50% not yet bred (75 days) or Open (107 days)

*bredsum

Can benchmark your herdsWill count herds that don’t enter

dataNeed to work with sub-groups

Summary

DC 305 –powerful toolMonitorEvaluateTroubleshoot

Quality and amount of data importantNeed more/better repro dataNeed more event/disease data

Information Overload

Sometimes too much information

Important to gather just what you need

Important to use it, once gathered