Recently two of our Senior Agri Managers, Charlotte Gray and Rosanna Dickson joined Sheryl Haitana and Sarah Perriam-Lampp on The Dairy Exporter Podcast to chat about the MINDA tool, and how we create specific understandings of what is “efficient” for each individual farmer. They also discussed how to get the best out of the best cows, the potential limitations of herd data, and ways of measuring efficiency.
"Within MINDA there’s custom reports so farmers can rank cows by any trait of interest, there’s existing ones like MINDA milk for example but it’s about pulling it together with your Agri manager to enable the forecasting aspect. The data of the herd today isn’t always going to be the most efficient herd of tomorrow.”
MINDA was discussed in detail, including the reporting tools and how farmers can use these to address efficiency in their herd.
“Simple options like herd profiles where they can pull in their basic cow information, then customise reports there. There are reports like the culling guide which starts to look at animals in the bottom quartile. There are different ways to look at it, the top quartile might be the ones we want to be breeding from, the bottom ones might be the ones that no longer have a place in the team.”
“There’s a couple predetermined reports under the reporting tab in MINDA but everything is customisable if the farmer has a specific thing they want to look at and that’s how they rank their animals then they can do that easily in any of those reports.”
Our Senior Agri Managers explained how we work with our farmers to understand their priorities and what efficiency means to them when it comes to their herd.
“The first thing is a conversation, and the first thing we ask is what are the best cows for you and are we breeding from those best cows. So, you might be doing all the great things, you might be using sexed semen but if you’re putting that into the least efficient cows on your farm, you’re not bringing through the best replacements. The first step is identifying what you’re doing now and are you getting the best from the best.”
“Every farmer could be throwing in a whole bunch of sexed semen, dropping out cows to beef but if the worst cows are getting the sexed straws and the best cows are getting the beef straws because there’s no herd testing happening, and we don’t know who the best or worst cows are, then that herd will just stay still.”
To listen to the full podcast:
Episode 40 - Making efficiency decisions this mating season - NZ Dairy Exporter
