I have a problem at my farm. One of my herdspeople has an incredibly tender heart and truly loves animals. The upside of this is that we’ve saved a lot of calves by putting them on IV treatments and nursing them back to health. The downside, however, is that she hates letting any animal leave the herd.
I often have to remind her that the herd is essentially my bank account. I must balance the books when it comes to feed costs and inventory. The issue is that we end up keeping animals... and eventually losing some animals that should never have been treated in the first place.
This brings me to the subject of disappearing cows. By disappearing cows, I’m referring to cows that are recorded in your dairy herd management software but are no longer physically in the herd. Or cows that are in the herd but not recorded in the system.
How do animals disappear?
There are several reasons animals might disappear from your herd:
- Sold animals not removed from the herd software: A cow that was sold might not have been updated in the dairy management system.
- Deceased animals still listed in the software: Sometimes animals that die are not removed from the dairy software. This can also happen when someone is trying to make the herd’s numbers look better hoping that future averages will even things out.
- Unenrolled animals: Some animals, particularly those with EID cattle tags may never have been enrolled in the dairy farm software.
- Theft: My least favorite reason for disappearing cows is theft. When you discover animals that were taken during the night, it’s important to ask yourself, “How secure is my facility?
Cows Disappearing in Pens
Cows can also disappear within the herd, especially in specific pens like the hospital pen. This creates an opportunity to evaluate and assess your herd health management practices.
Take a closer look at your hospital pen protocols. For instance, how long should a cow stay in the hospital pen? How long should cows be separated after a disease or health event? Asking these critical questions—and leveraging your health data—can help you fine-tune your protocols.
Leveraging Dairy Management Software to Improve Practices
One way to improve your management practices, is to take full advantage of your dairy management software. For example, Amelicor does a nice job showing hospital pen information right in their mobile app. Here are two examples related to mastitis in dairy cows:
Herd One
Herd Two
It's interesting that when evaluating the mastitis in the cows between these two groups there’s a notable difference of 15 days (35 days vs. 9.7 days).
Taking the time to interpret the data in your herd management software can help you re-evaluate your protocols. In this case, it might prompt you to take another look at how mastitis is diagnosed on the farm.
Discover More About Health Events by Using DHI-Plus Herd Management Software:
- If you currently use DHI-Plus and would like to try out the mobile service, here's how to get started.
- If you would like to know how to access the hospital reports for the mobile service, you can review the video in the article: Hospital Reports in DHI-Plus Mobile Service.
- To find out how many incidents of a particular health event in your herd, you can watch the video about Health Counts in DHI-Plus.