Vet Focus: Harnessing the Power of Your CIS Data on Your Farm

Vet Focus by Neil Fox BVM&S MBA (Dist.) MRCVS, Clinical Director at Clyde Veterinary Group

Making informed decisions on your farm is more critical than ever and the well worn cliche 'If you're not measuring you're not managing' is very relevant as margins on dairy farms remain tight. As customers of CIS you have access to several reports that could help improve the efficiency of your farm or act as an early warning system for looming issues.

The more accurate the data that you record the more complete the picture of your farm we can get. This can be tricky with the daily running of a dairy farm at times, but it doesn't have to be! The area managers at CIS have a variety of solutions to help record data more effectively and easily. Accuracy is important so the first question I ask when I look at a report is; Do I believe what I’m looking at here?

In my role as a farm vet at Clyde Vet Group in Scotland, I work with CIS data in a number of ways to help my clients. These are my top 3 YourHerd reports that I find most useful:

1. Johne’s Progress Tracker and Control Report

a) The Johne’s Control Report is a quick and easy report that can be used to check for red cows and yellow cows in your herd.
b) The report also shows whether the dam of the animal was a red or yellow cow as well as allowing you to make informed decisions on culling and breeding.
c) The Johne’s Progress Tracker is needed for the latest update to the Action Johne’s scheme. It shows your average test value benchmarked against other CIS farms.
d) It also benchmarks a range of parameters such as red and yellow cows, culling positives and cows with high test values to allow targeted control.

2. Cell Count Exception Report

a) The Cell Count Exception Report is useful in situations where the bulk tank SCC is too high, but should also be used regularly to identify problem cows and prevent full herd flare ups
b) Order your cows by contribution to identify the cows that will make the biggest impact to your bulk cell count as these also present the highest infection risk.

3. Monthly Fertility Summary

a) This is very dependent on recording all of your service data!
b) The report shows how well the farm is doing in days to first service, heat detection (interservice intervals) and conception rate to target herd level fertility interventions.

The CIS are very open to collaboration with other companies and so I use CIS data in a whole range of reports. We use VetImpress on our client’s farms and the CIS data allows us to view individual fertility, Johne's and cell count data at the time of scanning to make informed decisions. Vetimpress and CIS together allow us to view the conception rate of each of the fertility protocols we use and break down conception rate by inseminator and bull. Clyde Vet Group is part of the VetPartners group and so we have access to their Digifarm consultancy program which uses CIS data. Other programs such as Total Vet, Interherd, Interherd+ and QuarterPro (the free mastitis analysis software) also use CIS data to give great insights into your herd.

Dairy data doesn’t need to be for huge farms, it can provide a great benefit to all dairy farms. Speak to your vets, advisors or CIS area manager about what support is available for you to use more data on your farm and get the full benefit of your CIS membership.

Neil Fox BVM&S MBA (Dist.) MRCVS
Clyde Veterinary Group
T: 01555 660000
M: 07775792130

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