Improving your herd long-term
With a higher forecast payout, falling interest rates, and renewed confidence in the dairy industry, farmers can move beyond day-to-day survival and plan how they can improve their herd long term.
The ‘MINDA’ app is the latest from the farmer-owned cooperative’s series. Each app provides farmers with a key part of their herd recording software on their smartphone, so they can quickly record and review more information from wherever they may be.
The new app consolidates the four previously launched MINDA apps into one - Mating, Lookup, Calving and Pasture – and also includes new health features allowing farmers to:
§ Record a health diagnosis and treatments
§ Create a health plan for multiple doses of a treatment
§ Add multiple animals when recording a diagnosis/treatment
§ Enter milk and meat withholding periods
§ Save common treatments to device to simplify future recordings.
Rob Ford, LIC’s general manager information and automation, says health planning and management is a vital ingredient for cow performance.
“Just like people, if a cow is unwell, then she will not perform to her full potential, and accurate records are vital to ensuring she receives the treatment and special attention she needs,” he says.
“Farmers are very good at recording health information about their herd, and referring to it when they need it most, that’s nothing new, but this app will make that whole process much simpler and bring it into real-time.”
Ford says the new app will save time and allow farmers to make more informed decisions on the spot, without the need for doing a lot of work later in the office.
“Having the health features in the new one-stop-shop app, alongside other cow records, calvings, matings and pasture information would also simplify access to the data, with it all available in one place,” he says.
MINDA is available to download now from Android and Apple app stores, and will be showcased at the National Fieldays this week (LIC site, Ex22).
Download is free, and its use is at no extra charge for farmers subscribed to LIC’s MINDA software, no matter how many staff download it.
