Harnessing the power of data to create a brighter future for Canadian Dairy Farming

Data-Driven dairy herd management.
Our client enhances decision-making for dairy farms by gathering and processing herd health and milk data using various methods. Our mandate was to craft a centralized data warehouse for this purpose. Over nearly a decade, we have led over eight significant projects, including Cow Comfort, Box Time, and Fatty Acid Profile, leveraging Business Intelligence (BI) reporting and interactive dashboards and visualization integrated into the customer portal.

This portal ensures farmers are up-to-date on herd health and milk production, empowering them to fine-tune management practices, prevent productivity dips, and sustain economic performance.

In-Depth Insights: Cow Comfort Dashboard
Cow comfort is about ensuring the overall welfare of a cow, addressing both her physical and emotional requirements.

Our Cow Comfort Dashboard is designed to provide clear view of various discomfort indicators in cows which can reveal environmental issues within their living spaces. These indicators include:

• Injuries – location, severity, and recurrence
• Rising and lying – frequency, duration, and abnormal movement
• Rest – amount of time spent standing for no reason
• Abnormal behavior – deviation from normal standing and resting positions
• Lameness – painful, debilitating lesions leading to early death or culling

This dashboard allows farmers and animal technicians to track both group trends and individual cow conditions over time. With its detailed and aggregated views, users can access specific health data for individual cows or gain insights into the overall well-being of the herd, enabling proactive management and care.

Cows are very sensitive to negative environmental conditions. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provided in this dashboard are essential for pinpointing issues that must be remedied to reduce the stress factors detrimental to cow comfort.

Enhancing cow comfort is vital for boosting milk yield and quality, improving reproductive success, and disease prevention. Cow comfort is not just an economic concern for dairy producers, treating cows with compassion and care is simply the right thing to do.

Box Time Report
We created the Box Time Report, which leverages data from robotic milking systems to monitor key performance indicators like average time per milking, milking efficiency in kilograms of milk per minute, estimated maximum milk and fat yield per robot, and the milk value per cow and per robot in dollars. With these insights, dairy producers can enhance herd productivity by focusing on elevating the performance of their top-producing cows.

Fatty Acid Profile Report
Our client has spent years researching de novo fatty acids, exploring how they affect herd health and contribute to higher butterfat levels in milk, using data from 100 farms in Quebec. The findings showed that herds with elevated de novo fatty acid levels also saw the most substantial profit margins, particularly when considering feed costs.

Leveraging these insights, we created the Milk Fatty Acid Profile Report. This report, generated from bulk tank milk sample data, calculates KPIs highlighted by the research. It offers producers a window into their herd’s health and fatty acid profiles. With this data, producers can strategically enhance their herd’s profitability by boosting overall health and increasing the de novo fatty acid content in the milk, through dietary refinements and herd management practices.