Less stress for cows
On the reproduction side, Mast said his goal with CowManager was to speed up the breeding process and decrease time that cows are locked up. Mast gave an example of how CowManager has helped: “Let’s say you lock up 800 cows in preparation for the breeder, however the breeder gets to your operation a little late. Out of the 800 cows, he has to find the six cows he has to breed that day. All the cows remain in the headlocks while he searches. With CowManager, I can look at my list and know whether a pen has cows in it that need to be bred. If there aren’t any cows on the list, I can let the entire pen go. Those cows only need to be locked up for 20 minutes while we clean the stalls versus an hour waiting for the breeder to finish. Our lock-up time has gone way down. It means less standing time and less stress for the cows. They now get to go do what they need to do, which is eat and rest.”
Another benefit, Mast says, is he no longer needs to go around tail chalking. Instead, CowManager puts together a list of cows in heat. “I know that CowManager finds the cows, especially the ones that wouldn’t have been caught with just conventional tail chalk. I don’t have to put as many cows on the OvSynch program. CowManager finds those cows, helps us get them bred and I can cut way down on the number of shots I have to give.”
Since putting in CowManager, Calori-D hasn’t had a single open cow when they palpated prior to drying off. The system helps the team find cows that lose their calf after being palpated pregnant. It shows the team that she has come back in heat even though she is no longer in the breeding pen. “Having that info about which cows are truly open is another huge bonus and adds up in major cost savings,” explains Mast.
Based on fertility goals, the dairy is seeing an estimated $32,611 total annual return using CowManager. This includes a 50% reduction in labor needed for finding cows in heat, an 80% reduction in tail chalk, a 2% improvement in pregnancy rate (from 25% to 27%), and a big reduction in hormone intervention. The improved pregnancy rate adds up to more than $20,000 in savings per year alone.
Easy to use
“My kids will grab my phone and say, ‘Hey Dad, this cow is sick.’ They know the color codes and will see red for sick and yellow for suspicious. They also will pick up on which cows are in heat,” says Mast, emphasizing that CowManager makes it easy to use the system. “The data is all very straightforward and easy to navigate. It’s up to me to figure out what to do with all the data. This system gives me the cows that need attention. We have to take the next step.”
While Mast jumped on board quickly, he said it took his herdsman a little more time to trust the data. Mast would tell him about a cow that made the sick-cow list, and his herdsman would say “She looks OK.” After several rounds of diagnosing the cows on the list together, whether she was fighting E. coli or lameness or a simple bellyache, the herdsman now knows that if it’s showing red or yellow, there is something going on with that cow and she needs attention. “I have yet to have CowManager miss a cow that is sick,” says Mast. “If a cow is sick and needs attention, she is on that list. It’s like I have an extra, knowledgeable employee that is looking at all the cows at the same time. CowManager allows us to focus on where the needs are versus having to walk the entire pen and look for problems.”
Helps me stay one step ahead
Mast said he once told his dad when they first started farming together that he could lock up the cows and walk behind them and then in front of them and be able to identify the cows that needed attention. He felt comfortable in that role, however, he was seldomly able to accomplish that task because something else always needed his attention. Now with CowManager, Mast knows that the task is getting done. He also likes that he can go away on a vacation or attend an event and know that he’s able to check in on the cows while he’s gone. It gives him peace of mind.
Mast admits that the system sometimes drives his wife nuts. “I’ll be sitting at the dinner table and get an alert,” says Mast. “My wife knows I must go back to the dairy to check on a cow. While she’s not thrilled with the dinner-time interruption, the entire family knows that it’s for a good reason.”
Using the CowManager monitoring system has allowed Calori-D Dairy to focus on the needs of individual cows in a timelier manner, while also managing the entire herd’s productivity. The technology has yielded results in all aspects of each cow’s life cycle including breeding, dry cow, freshening and milking. This makes them more effective, as well as efficient. The economics of using CowManager is easy to demonstrate with the information the system provides. The benefits are also easy to see walking in the free stall barn, where the cows are doing what they need to do, eating and resting.
