Making smarter transition cow decisions with DairyComp
The transition period is a critical time for your herd as cows are adjusting to metabolic changes and are more susceptible to disease. By keeping accurate records and reviewing the data, you can help provide a seamless transition period to improve cow health, milk production and profitability.
Utilizing DairyComp will allow you to record necessary data and generate reports that will help you and your management team to set goals, evaluate performance and better understand transition cow performance on your herd from start to finish.
Understanding transition cow performance starts with quality and consistent data
Sometimes when treating cows becomes complex, incorrect data can get entered. For example, a cow with a retained placenta would be one health event, but she may need to be treated five times. Utilizing the event GAP feature in DairyComp will ensure this event is recorded as one event rather than five. This will help to clarify the difference between health events that occurred compared to the treatment plan that was carried out.
Additionally, setting Protocols within DairyComp will help ensure the right treatment plans are applied to the right cow, every time. With protocols set up, there’s a clear action plan for your team no matter who might be carrying out the treatment. This can also deliver more confidence when evaluating the success of your protocols knowing they were applied consistently and as intended.
Finally, consider how you and your team are entering events, remarks and protocols. Consistency will make things clearer for your whole team and streamline the way you analyze your data – leading to faster, more accurate decision making.
Evaluating your herd data
With consistent, accurate data in DairyComp, you’ll be able to evaluate your transition cow performance using these tools:
Commands will help you evaluate data from Events based on specific parameters. This can help generate a detailed and useful report from large amounts of data.
SUM Commands will gather groups of cows based on the criteria entered and will show you which cows fall into the specific category you are looking at.
EGRAPH will help you visualize data in a graph or plot based off of the data collected from Events.
GUIDE will allow you to dig into information from Protocols. You can also review the success of your treatment plans and organize results in a graph.
For a more in-depth look at how to use DairyComp to record and analyze data related to transition cow performance, check out our webinar. In addition, our Command Reference Guide is a great cheat sheet for users of all skill levels.
If you would like additional help understanding any of the content covered in the webinar, or would like to set up specific reporting for your dairy, reach out to VAS’ support team!
