Shropshire Farming Talk: 10 Reasons to Milk Record your Dairy Herd
Dairy farmers have an opportunity to invest in the long-term profitability of their herds through milk recording.
In an era of precision agriculture and performance data, the most important piece of data that a dairy farmer can obtain is milk yield and composite results.
Here are ten reasons why you should milk record your dairy herd:-
1. Detect high somatic cell count (SCC) cows and control your herds average SCC. This will identify and aid the management of repeat offenders and could dramatically decrease your herds overall SCC, improve milk price and aid the reduction of medication use.
2. Analysis for Butterfat, Protein, Lactose and Urea along with the capability for analysis of Fatty acids and Ketosis to highlight the imbalance of butterfat/protein levels.
3. An effective way to detect under-performing cows not suitable for breeding replacements or selling to other herds. Ranks cows based on their expected profit potential for their lifetime.
4. Health Tests can easily be carried out using the milk samples, tests include Johne’s, BVD, IBR, Lepto, Liver Fluke and Neospora.
5. Add value and marketability to your herd with authenticated herd records as milk recording adds significant value to any surplus breeding stock being sold.
6. Milk samples can also be used for pregnancy diagnosis. The PregCheck service will indicate if a cow is pregnant in a hassle free and non-invasive way.
7. Gain access to the YourHerd complete herd management program and our MobileHerd App at no extra cost. Use these two services to view the complete picture of the herd and investigate individual cow performance along with recording key events and treatments along with short and long term production planning.
8. Milk recording customers can access their herd genetic report to ascertain the herd's strengths and weaknesses and make informed decisions about their future potential.
9. The saying ‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’ is very true with herd performance. Milk recording provides important information to look at the herd as a whole but, more importantly, each cow within the herd, providing data that identifies whether the animal is making a positive or negative difference to business performance.
10. Access free Benchmark and KPI reports and graphs to compare your herd's performance with our measures and targets to identify areas for improvement.
Read more about the CIS Milk Recording Service call 01923 695319 or visit www.thecis.co.uk
Amanda Wilkes, CIS Area Manager
