Get real-time data on your dairy cows at your fingertips

For over 40 years, VAS' Dairy Comp, a Wisconsin-based data management software company, has been helping dairy farmers create and use collected herd health data to improve reproduction and nutritional wellness in their herd.

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Recently, VAS has added two new features to analyze dairy herd health in real time. The HealthVAL and OneView features are evaluation tools for farmers wanting to spot herd health trends and reduce costs.

"Within minutes, HealthVAL can dig into the costs of health events by animal or access your herd to make timely management decisions," says Preston Vincent, vice president of sales. "If you're managing animals across multiple dairies, OneView brings it together in one dashboard for simplified management."

A deeper drive into herd health costs

With HealthVAL's health index analysis, users can identify the costs and track episodes of various health conditions, including mastitis, pneumonia, lameness, retained placenta, ketosis, and milk fever. Farmers can customize the data, create a threshold and see the total costs of each health event.

"This makes identifying the animals costing a farm easier," says Vincent. "Farmers can quickly assess problem cows, what type of health events have contributed to their accumulated cost, and when costs incurred."

Additionally, users receive text or email alerts from HealthVAL when the system discovers certain cows exceed a threshold set for herd health management, such if a cow has had more than two retained placentas.

Farmers can also dive into an individual cow or heifer's health costs. HealthVal pinpoints which animal and their health conditions such as lameness, pneumonia and ketosis are becoming costly to the farm.

There is also an option to compare a herd's health performance benchmark against other dairy herds.

Get your data all in one place

Most dairy farms have more than one location housing cows and heifers, which can require multiple spreadsheets or different management tools to track cow inventory, lactations, breeding, and herd trends. OneView simplifies the process by allowing DairyComp users to access various barns' data in its dashboard.

Since last year, California dairy farmer Brett Barlass has been tracking 16,171 cows with OneView.

"OneView takes the place of multiple spreadsheets and puts information into one convenient and easy-to-use web-based platform," says Barlass.

The software also creates comparison charts and graphs of each barn's productivity data. With the comparison, farmers can forecast six months out for herd metrics such as culling rate and dry cow periods.

For more information about VAS' Dairy Comp software's new features visit their website, HealthVAL and OneView.