Identify Sick Cows More Quickly with CowManager

By: Dori Lichty

Reasons are many why a dairy farm would want to install a cow-monitoring system: improve pregnancy rate to save money, expansion, replace an employee, etc. For the Boelter brothers at Pride View Dairy, LLC, it was time for a change. “We looked at a few different systems, because we were at a fork in the road where we had to expand the current system or try something new,” said Luke, the youngest of the three brothers.

Twenty-four full-time employees and a team of dedicated consultants help Chad, Heath, and Luke Boelter milk 1,300 cows and farm 2,000 acres outside of Randolph, Wisconsin. About five years ago, they had just built another barn when they realized there was more to cow-monitoring systems than catching heats. “The old system was just activity; we liked the rumination feature about CowManager,” said Chad. “In addition, Eric (Gudex, CentralStar A.I. Specialist) was familiar with it.”

Monitoring Health and Fertility

Using both the Health and Fertility modules on the cows and fertility on the heifers, the team at Pride View Dairy has enjoyed taking ownership of CowManager and finding ways to incorporate it on the dairy. “After CowManager was installed, I stopped walking and chalking everything after a 2-3-month period, once we were all adapted to it a little,” said Eric. “Eric uses the CowManager system the most, and David (Shrock), our herd manager, uses it day to day,” added Heath. “At first David was skeptical; the system had to earn his trust. Now he’s confident in it.”

Taking a hard look at overall management when installing CowManager is a good idea. Some farms discontinue all use of synchronization with CowManager, but the Boelters decided to incorporate a first- service timed-A.I. “The cows are bred at 75 days with G-6-G and watched for a return at 21 days,” said Eric. “CowManager is used to pick up returns. Everyone open is then enrolled in the Ovsynch program. We want to be as aggressive as possible when getting cows pregnant, so we use a combination of CowManager and shot protocols to make that happen.”

Increased Pregnancy Rate

In the five years since Pride View installed CowManager, their cow pregnancy rate increased from 22% with a 60% submission rate to 34% with a 75% submission rate. “The numbers tell a lot by themselves,” said Chad. “It has definitely improved our breeding, there’s no doubt about that.”

The Health Module farms can get with CowManager has proven beneficial on many dairies, and Pride View is no exception. “We definitely catch sick cows quicker,” said Heath. “When we move them out of the post-fresh pen into larger groups, you can watch their rumination to see how they’re doing. So, we’re a little faster at early identification.”

“A health issue it really helps with is HBS (Hemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome),” added Chad. “With that, the cows are really knocked out fast, so CowManager helps catch that.”

Identify Sick Cows, Decrease Disease

By using CowManager to get cows pregnant at the appropriate time and monitoring their health in a more efficient fashion, Pride View Dairy has been able to freshen in 319 more cows per year without even increasing herd size. They’ve also seen significant decreases in cow death, ketosis, metritis, and retained placenta. In turn, all this has made it possible for the farm to obtain income from selling more cows.

Is the System Worth it?

The big question when installing a new management practice on a farm is, “Was it worth it?” The Boelters think so. “It’s hard to put an actual value on the system,” said Heath. “There are so many variables involved.” “We definitely see an advantage of having it, though,” added Chad. “There’s no doubt about that.”

“It has been extremely helpful to Eric compared to the tail chalking and the amount of time he stuck into that. That’s probably one of the biggest paybacks,” noted Heath. “We’re catching that (sick) cow quicker that we probably wouldn’t have caught right away.”