When Cows Are Left Alone

 Why?

Because it is extremely difficult to know which cow needs veterinary intervention and which one does not. Thus, we play it safe and check them all.

Once an electronic cow monitoring system is introduced, one has real-time information about each and every cow, without having to “touch” her. Knowing the status of individual cows allows herdsmen to focus only on those cows that need attention. The healthy cows are left alone to do whatever it is that cows like to do like rest, eat, or ruminate.

The Group Consistency graph displayed below shows the total rumination minutes (blue line) and the Group Rumination Consistency graph (black line). Group Rumination Consistency measures the difference in rumination time between the cows that ruminate the most to those that ruminate the least in the group. The lower this graph falls, the more consistent the rumination is within the group.

This graph is unique since this fresh cow group underwent two significant management changes on December 3rd, 2017.

The first change was deployment of a sort gate, the second was a management decision to discard the conventional fresh cow program and start checking only the cows that appear on the monitoring system’s Health Report.

The change is dramatic.

About 30 rumination minutes on average were added daily (highlighted by green square) and group rumination consistency began dropping, indicating cows are ruminating more consistently within the group. In fact, rumination levels after the sort gate was installed climbed to levels only previously seen during the weekend (weekends marked with purple arrows) and are less variable.

Now, every day is like the weekend in this fresh pen. Lucky cows!