Cow Corner has always provided subscription customers weekly information to track trends in robot feed consumption, cow performance and system performance. Starting this week, that information is much easier to use because the reports include graphs. My Dad preferred an analogue watch over a digital watch. Always a very practical mechanical engineer, he said an analogue watch is a graph. He said you don’t use your watch to tell what time it is, you use it to tell how much time you have – and a graph saved him the calculation. Remember the guys in Apollo 13 with white shirts, ties and slide rules? Dad wouldn’t like my Fitbit, but he would approve of the new Cow Corner report format.
Production graphs show cow performance by lactation group and stage of lactation. The first graph combines the last 2 months of production, feeding, and milking information to approximate a lactation curve. The curve is divided into increments of 50 DIM. This example shows mature cows. First lactation cows have a separate graph. Aggregating 60 days of information minimizes week to week fluctuation while still reflecting the current trend. The example shows feed consumption well below ration because we are in the process of making adjustments to reduce the amount of robot feed.
The second graph shows the week-to-week 7-day average for cows in specific stages of
lactation. There are graphs like this example for 0 to 50 DIM, 50 to 100 DIM, and 100
to 200 DIM. 9 weeks are displayed to monitor the trend. First lactation cows and mature cows each have their own graph. This is a quick way to drill into trends for each group. This example, from the same farm, shows production is improving, visits are staying constant, while pellet feeding is intentionally being reduced.
Two more graphs track performance of the milking robots by device and by pen. The first shows yield and milking duration. The line graph shows the 9 week trend for milking duration for each robot. The bar graphs show milk yield for each robot individually, and combined for
the pen. The example shows that yield has increased slowly but steadily over the past 9 weeks for pen 1, but more of the gain has come from robot 1. Meanwhile milking duration has gone down recently. Longer duration on 2/19 could have been caused by system problems that affected both robots.
The final graph completes the system performance information. Bar graphs show the number of milkings for each robot and combined for the pen. Line graphs show the
incomplete milkings and idle time for each robot in the pen. The example shows that the total number of milkings has increased since the beginning of March. The extra milkings have caused idle time to go down, as expected. Meanwhile, incomplete milkings have trended up for robot 3 because it has been used to train fresh heifers. Combining the number of milkings and idle time by pen in one graph makes it easy to see which pens are fully stocked and which pens may have capacity for more cows.
Contact me at Cow Corner to learn how my reports can help you get the most from your cows and your system.
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