Having good records is paramount for sound decision making. Record every health event and every treatment because accurate records will reveal patterns and opportunities. Understanding your herd health landscape will help fine-tune management decisions and provide valuable insights for sire selection. Events like mastitis and lameness aren’t
solely dependent on management, the genetic component is strong and will reveal itself if record keeping remains a priority.
The hospital pen is not something many farmers like to dwell on – it’s a money pit of treatment costs and lost production. Farmers often want to get it off their minds as quickly as they want to graduate cows back into general population. Pause to review the metrics generated from the cows in the hospital pen – they have a lot to say. Invite genomics to join the conversation and your hospital pen will begin to disclose critical trends in lameness and mastitis scores. Below are some unique ways that I use mine and analyze data from the hospital pen. I’ll also share some practical ways in which I use this data to make management decisions.
Metric No. 1: Percent of Cows in the Hospital With Mastitis.
Follow up questions:
Are these cows coming from a certain pen or from a certain facility?
Can we use previous somatic cell count (PSCC) and SCC as indicators of who might be susceptible to a mastitis event?
Metric No. 2: Percent of cows in the hospital that are lame.
Follow up questions:
Where is the lameness occurring?
Can we change facilities to lessen lameness events?
Is the concrete acceptable?
Do we need grooving or even one more step — rubber?
Did we get a bad batch of sand that we need to run through a gravel screen to remove pea gravel stones?
Metric No. 3: Days in the hospital for individual cows.
The days can blend together, it’s important to date every pen move so you know if a cow has overstayed her welcome in the hospital pen.
Metric No. 4: Number of sick cows identified per milking shift.
Identify which milking shift is assigning the most cows to the hospital pen. This metric might seem to carry a negative connotation, but it’s an opportunity for these “finders” to teach other team
members how to identify sick cows earlier and why early prevention is important for cow recovery and your bottom line.
Metric No. 5: Breakdown of hospital pen cows by stage of lactation and lactation number.
Follow up questions:
Are there commonalities in the stage of lactation or lactation number of the cows that find themselves in the hospital pen?
Are we treating more older cows in the hospital pen?
Should these frequent flyers be gestating our next generation of replacement heifers or carrying a terminal beef on dairy calf?
Metric No. 6: Hospital trips in her lifetime
For this final metric, you must have exceptional records! If she has had a hospital pen stay LACT 1, LACT 2, and is now in the hospital LACT 3 — this cow should be on the do not breed (DNB) list.
As you see in these examples, the milking parlor is where most health concerns are identified. Genetic selection for generational improvement of health and wellness is our goal. In the meantime, how will you limit and prevent the impact of health events
during the dry period?