Ewen Ferguson OABP/OABA Guelph April 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/troubleshoot  Production/components  Health/culling  Udder health  Reproduction  Benchmarking—yourself/others  List generator  To do lists

DC 305  How I use to monitor monthly  Things I look at  How I make it easy  How I use to troubleshoot  Look at exceptions  Develop action points

Monthly overview: Things I look at  Monitor (monitor)  Test day summary (tdsum1)  “Feeding guide”  Herd Repro Inventory  305M 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/troubleshoot  Production/components  Health/culling  Udder health  Reproduction  Benchmarking—yourself/others

Production/Components Production: (over time / test day)  Herd variations  Lactation Group variations  Individual variations Components:  High/Low BF  Ratio

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  Ketotest  100umol/L BHBA in milk (80% sens/spec)  Goal: <20% SCK  Look at proportion of cows with a protein: fat ratio 4  High Risk Herds:>40% PFR <.75 >10% BCS >4

% Butterfat distribution (graph pctf)

Health/Culling  Many health events can be recorded  We do a very poor job  Missing a large opportunity to improve herd health  Need to establish guidelines and disease definition  Need to standardize

EGRAPH

Events  Poorly utilized  Get CSR’s to enter (or on farm)  Close the loop  Get advisor to discuss/comment  Very powerful motivator

L %id age dim milk pctf pctp scc disp for (ec=14) (ec=15) dim 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 1 st 60 days. Godden 2003

Udder Health  Sub clinical  Excellent reports  Passive  Clinical  Like events—under utilized  Active—someone needs to record and enter  Need to standardize

OK New Chronic Cured

New <10% Chronic <10% OK 70% Cured 70% Dry Cow

OK Cured Chronic New

Cured Chronic New OK

Reproduction  Excellent reports but… under-utilized  Pregnancy rates not well understood  Need to enter accurate data  Need to enter all breedings and confirmed pregnancies  Important to monitor

Repro Commands  Bredsum\ev50 for lact>0\d280  “v” sets VWP  Report  Graph  Add “r” for regression graph (evr)

Reproduction Goals  50% pregnant by 3 cycles  75% pregnant by 6 cycles  <30% open after 10 cycles after VWP

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

*bredsum  Can benchmark your herds  Will count herds that don’t enter data  Need to work with sub-groups

Summary  DC 305 –powerful tool  Monitor  Evaluate  Troubleshoot  Quality and amount of data important  Need more/better repro data  Need more event/disease data

Information Overload  Sometimes too much information  Important to gather just what you need  Important to use it, once gathered