When the bulk of calving is over, the focus quickly shifts to preparing for the breeding season.

At a time to consider Sire Advice & bull selection, it is also useful to record heat activity also.

If you see a cow or maiden heifer bulling it can be recorded quickly and easily as a heat in AgriNet HerdApp. In 18 days time the same cow will appear in a due to repeat list. More importantly there will be a list of cows not yet seen in heat but calved 42 days or more. These are the cows you may want to examine before the breeding season starts.

All fertility action lists are located in the Jobs List area of the Overview reports. Cows & maiden heifers are split in to different lists. Once an AI or stock bull serve is recorded in HerdApp, cows show up as required in due to repeat lists and due to pregnancy test lists.

HerdApp is ideally placed to track fertility for a cow from calving to next calving and to track fertility for a maiden heifer from birth to first calving.

In March 2022 Agrinet HerdApp added a new feature where dairy farmers can make their beef calves for sale visible to beef buyers.

Any beef farmer, or calf buying company, can visit https://app.agrinet.ie/Herd/AnimalsForSale.aspx to see beef calves made available for sale by Agrinet HerdApp dairy farmers.

If a calf is marked with Verified by Serve it means a serve exists on ICBF nine months prior to the date of birth of the calf. This helps a lot in terms of verifying the correct sire of the calf and thereby the correct breed composition of the calf. Since Agrinet HerdApp gets all Dam and Sire data from ICBF the accuracy of all the genetics data is excellent. We have decided to develop this feature due to the genetic merit of beef calves bred from the dairy herd coming under increased scrutiny from both an environmental and a profitability point of view.

As more sexed semen is used for dairy replacements on dairy farmers, there will be an increase in the amount of male beef calves in the dairy herd. This service aims to promote the use of high genetic merit sires within the Dairy herd that excel for beef traits such as carcass weight in addition to short gestation and easy calving.

For beef farmers, this helps the process of sourcing high quality beef stock from the dairy herd. It is a convenient way to find quality calves and then directly contact the seller with the beef farmer able to filter on important aspects such as calf breed and location. This should then lead to more profitable dairy beef systems for beef farmers due to an increased emphasis on the genetic make up of beef calves.

For dairy farmers using Agrinet HerdApp this is a useful way to make their calves visible for sale in many public locations. The list is visible from a number of locations including www.progressivegenetics.ie and also in Agrinet HerdApp itself. It can be published by any company or group wishing to make high quality beef calves from dairy farms visible to beef rearing farms.

Every year Agrinet registers 100’s of thousands of calves from the Agrinet HerdApp phone app.

In Agrinet, we know how busy the calving season is, and how important it is to get the calves tagged, recorded, and registered from the calving box.

But before the first calf hits the ground, it helps a lot to know when the calves are going to be born. The Calving report in Agrinet HerdApp shows the calves due to calve for each week in 2022.

From this demo farm shown in picture 1, we know the first 2 calves will arrive in the week starting 17 January and 75% of the cows will be calved at the end of the week starting 28 of February.

This report shown on the Herdapp helps farmers to plan the calving season ahead effectively.

A farmer can drill down on any number to see the list of cows due to calve in that week.

Registering Of Calves

When the calving starts this is the Births screen where all the calves are tracked and registered.

All calves born to date are listed in this screen. In here, you can track when a card comes back in the post, which is the end goal for each registration.

A farmer adds a new calf by clicking New Birth and they register calves using Register Calves. It’s as simple as that.

You may prefer to use New Birth for all calves in the yard, and use Register Calves when you are back in the wifi in the house. Or you can use Register Calves from the calving box, whatever suits your situation best.

Just getting it all work completed quickly on your phone is the key. Getting all the cows calved quickly also sets up the herd for the breeding season. HerdApp has a great system to track heats and serves, which helps create a nice calving pattern for the following year.

First set the dry cow rules for your farm

Every farm can set the rules for selecting cows for SDCT. Cows can get a dry cow tube if 1 or more SCC values are over 200, or 2 or more SCC values are over 150, and so forth. You can also set your preferred dry period for mature cows and first calvers.

• To get your herd’s due to dry list go to Overview on the Home screen, you’ll see Due to dry on the Jobs list.
• To set the targets for your herd, click the settings icon to the right of Due to dry. The screen below will open.
• To use the SDCT logic (which is optional), put a tick in the box below for SDCT.
• The key data for SDCT cow selection is the SCC values in the milk recording results
• HerdApp also uses the cases of mastitis recording since the last calving

Then you can view the list of cows to dry

• When you click on the Due to dry row in the Jobs list, you will see the screen below
• Ok (in green in the SDCT column) means teat sealer only is recommended.
• Drug (in red in the SDCT column) means a dry cow tube is recommended.
• You can view the body condition score (BCS) value when drying off a batch of cows and perhaps give cows with a low BCS a longer dry period.
• Once the cows have been dried off, the drugs and dry off dates can then be recorded in a batch screen for speed of data entry.

• The colour coding explained when showing SCC values on HerdApp…
• Green, Health Cows. the last two tests were below the SCC target value set.
• Blue, Recently Cured, the cow’s last SCC has below target and the previous SCC was above target.
• Orange, Recently Infected, the cow’s last SCC has above target and the previous SCC was below target.
• Red, Persistently Infected, the last two tests were above the SCC target value set.

Drying Off Tips from Shane Leane, Progressive Genetics.

1. Calving Date: Cows want minimum of 6-8 weeks to prepare for next lactation
2. Lactation number: Focus on drying 1^st lactation animals first 10-12 weeks dry to allow recovery. 
3. Body condition Score: Aim to dry off at BCS 3.0 to 3.25. Additional feeding may be required for thin cows
4. Silage Quality should be assessed to ensure cows will calve at correct BCS
5. High SCC cows should be identified for treatment

Dry Off- Procedure

• Do not during milking! – Mark & draft cows at milking for drying off when milking is finished
  • Consider marking cows in evening & drafting in morning so fewer mistakes are made
• One person can dry off approx. 20 cows per hour
• Wash out parlour between batches for hygiene
• Gloves should be worn for hygiene
• Disinfect all teats thoroughly
• Use cotton wool soaked in meth or use wipes
• Concentrate on teat end- Disinfect FAR to NEAR
• Administer teat seal- NEAR to FAR
• Teat seal administered last
• With teat seal squeeze base as you administer & do NOT massage
• Teat dip or spray immediately after treatment
• Avoid cows lying down post treatment
• Keep recently dried cows away from parlour so noises etc. don’t stimulate milk production

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