A Decision For Every Cow

Some cows milk well and conceive easily. Yet even with the best management, some cows simply don’t make enough milk and/or remain open at later stages of their lactations. Clearly, these cows create a major dent in overall herd profitability, creating urgency to identify these cows and rectify the situation. Electronic animal monitoring reports provide actionable information to help the manager take these steps.

Determining break-even milk yield

Since milk production is a dairy’s main driver of revenue, it should be the first criteria to evaluate an individual cow’s future in the herd. First, establish a break-even daily milk yield. The report below plots the daily milk production of every cow, color-coded by pregnancy status. Blue dots represent confirmed pregnant cows, green dots are bred cows and pink dots are open animals.

In this example, the red line shows a break-even daily milk production level of 60 lbs. Using the “Average Weekly Yield by Lactation Status” graph, we can see this herd has about 100 cows below this threshold that are not paying their way. Depending on the specific situation of the herd, but we can safely assume that many of these cows should not remain in the herd, even if they are pregnant.

Replacing cows that don’t pay their way with cows that can pay their way is the first step toward profit improvement.

Analyzing open cows

Next, look at open cows in the herd.

Open cows could fall into one of two categories:

Cows not showing heats.
Cows not conceiving.

Cows that have not shown heats for a period over 30 days can be found in the “Anestrus Cow” report, shown below. This report sorts cows by days in milk (DIM).

Starting with the “stalest” cow (longest DIM), evaluate each animal’s condition by digging into these parameters:

Daily milk production level
DIM
Health during current lactation
Age

With this information we can determine which cows are not cycling due to negative energy balance and which are not cycling due to health issues. By examining these cows within the voluntary wait period (VWP), the manager can decide on a course of action that is specific to each animal early in the lactation. Making decisions sooner rather than later gives the manager more options on the best path for these open animals.

What about repeat breeders?

Cows that have shown heats but have not conceived after multiple inseminations can be found in the “Repeat Breeders” report. See example below.

This report sorts cows by the number of breeding events in the current lactation.

Starting with the cow furthest into the lactation, we evaluate the prospects of each animal’s potential contribution to the profitability of the herd by assessing her:

Daily milk production level
Genetic merit
Age
Health during current lactation
Availability of replacements

This information enables the manager to determine whether or not to continue breeding a cow. Users typically set a maximum threshold of four breeding events per cow.

When used together, the “Repeat Breeders” report, the “Anestrus Cow” report and the “Lactation Status” graph provide a relatively quick and simple way to ensure herd management knows which cows are paying their way as well as identify and address potential problems in a timely manner.

Going through this process once a month and compiling a list of the top candidate cows for removal from the herd makes sense for the efficiency and profitability of the dairy.