Improving Cow Comfort is free milk in the tank
The Cow Comfort index is a relatively new metric for dairy farmers, but effective use of the index can clearly show what can be improved in a dairy’s daily routine. Increasing lying time, even just 5-10 minutes per day, can have a significant impact on health and milk production. Two dairy experts from Agtech company Cainthus explain.
Cow comfort is one of the most discussed topics in the US dairy community today both on-line and in person. Cows feel most comfortable in an environment that enables them to exhibit their natural time budget behaviors (resting, feeding, rumination). A comfortable cow bed with fresh bedding material and access to feed and water throughout the day enhances cow comfort. Other factors that also impact a cow’s comfort level include stocking density, airflow, and timeout of the pen (milking). “A very important, leading metric in cow comfort is lying time. When a cow can lie down, this has a direct effect on health and production and many studies have confirmed this causal effect. Increasing lying time can reduce lameness, and additionally, late pregnancy losses are reduced”, explains Andre Rigo, veterinarian by training and Director of Sales at Cainthus.
Improving lying time is key
Lying time is an important metric to measure and manage, but what is an optimum lying time? ‘’ALUS Behavior by Cainthus enables us to monitor lying times for each pen of cows”, Tyler Bramble PhD, Portfolio Growth Manager at Cainthus adds. “There is a lot of variation between dairies, and even between groups and pens within the same dairy. What is an ideal target for lying time? I always thought that all cows should rest for at least 12 hours a day. But when we start to look at different groups within a dairy, it is unrealistic to expect that every cow, pen or group will lie down the same amount of time. High producing cows for example have a physical demand to eat more which means they will spend more time at the feed bunk than say a low producing cow. Thus, the optimum resting time for this group is different from cows that are producing less. It is about knowing the baseline for your pens and groups and setting realistic goals and expectations to improve upon” Bramble explains.
The Cow Comfort Index
Increasing lying time can be managed at each farm by carefully looking at certain procedures that require cows to stand for a long time, such as the lock up time, pregnancy checks or the time that cows spend milking, walking from and to the milking parlor and the time the cows are locked in the holding pen. Andre Rigo explains: “If we can make these procedures more efficient or do them differently, we can increase resting time and directly impact milk production and the bottom line. Even if we are talking about gaining 5 or 10 minutes of lying time per day, the effects on the bottom line can be significant”. The challenge lies in finding a way to continuously measure cow comfort and translate this information in a practical metric to work with. The University of Wisconsin therefore defined the Cow Comfort index (%), based on the number of cows lying in beds divided by the total number of cows touching the beds. This index is routinely used by dairy consultants to estimate cow comfort and can be used to assess stalls and bedding. With the introduction of new technologies such as camera vision in dairy cow facilities, we can measure cow behavioral patterns continually and calculate an accurate and representative Cow Comfort index for all the pens on the dairy. This allows not only the consultant to use this information, but also the herd managers and other key personnel on the dairy.
Measure, baseline, change
Cainthus provides a Cow Comfort index with its product ALUS Behavior, based on several cow behavioral patterns such as lying time. The Cainthus technology relies on a smart camera system that monitors animal behavior as well as operations on the farm, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Cainthus has developed state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that automatically turns these visual inputs from cameras into real-time insights including a Cow Comfort index. The industry standard is a minimum lying time of 12 hours and 85% of cows resting. But as said earlier, this can be different for each dairy and lactation group. It is all about measuring, setting the baseline and implementing change. While we cannot always change the barn itself, we can look at air flow, cow density, bedding material, lock up time, time spent milking etc”. Rigo adds that out of pen time is something we should try to minimize. The more time cows spend on their feet, the more chance of developing lameness. “The goal should be to minimize the time out of the pen. By reducing the time out of the pen we give the cow the choice to rest, eat, drink all of which will improve production and health.
Economic impact for farmers
The Cow Comfort index that Cainthus provides to farmers is a very good indication of how good the dairy is managing the animal and the environment. As Cainthus monitors more and more cows, several areas to focus on have emerged as areas. A large dairy in Tulare California milking over 5000 cows was concerned that their cows were spending close to 3 hours out of the pen each day and the effect it has on lameness issues. Shortly after ALUS behavior was deployed, the management team began focusing on reducing the time for each of the 3 milkings a day. Focusing initially on reducing 5 to 10 minutes for each milking, the dairy reduced the out of pen time by 23 minutes. This resulted in an increased lying time of 17 minutes. While 17 minutes doesn't seem like a lot of time, this is worth about 1 pound of milk. At another large Jersey dairy in Hilmar, CA, using ALUS Behavior and making some management changes (bedding protocols and timing) enabled certain pens to see 30 minutes of additional lying time, netting almost 2 pounds of extra milk.
While it is standard to “lock-up cows” for various reasons like pregnancy checking animals, treating sick cows, inseminating etc, it also represents a big opportunity to enhance lying time and cow comfort. This was also seen on a dairy with large pens (approximately 750 cows) where the managers were able to see a significant drop in lying time every monday, the day they were doing pregnancy checks. The managers altered the pregnancy check protocol and saw an increase in lying time of 16 minutes. When you multiply these minutes across a large number of cows, it does have a significant impact on the bottom line. Increasing cow comfort almost means free milk, considering that for every additional hour of resting time, milk production increases by approximately 3.7lbs (Grant, 2007 Miner Institute). “These are clear numbers that show the positive effects of using behavioral insights generated by our ALUS Behavior to make farm protocols more efficient, which is better for the dairy and the cow. With ALUS Behavior, we are improving cow comfort and the dairy’s bottom line”, Rigo concludes.
Interested to learn more about cow comfort. Re-watch the latest webinar on this topic or get in contact with us at info@cainthus.com.