Ewen Ferguson OABP/OABA Guelph April 29-2004
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Transcript of Ewen Ferguson OABP/OABA Guelph April 29-2004
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