HERDMANCom: A NEW PREVENTIVE HERD HEALTH SOFTWARE TO
ENHANCE DAIRY ANIMAL PRODUCTIVITY
DEVELOPED BY INFOVET
INCOLLOABORATION WITH DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE, BOMBAY
VETERINARY COLLEGE, PAREL, MUMBAI 400 012, INDIA
The definition of health or disease in animals is more elaborate and includes parameters
such as profitability and fertility. Thus, if a dairy animal is to be called this animal must
give optimum production and should also breed optimally. Such as definition of health
also satisfies the business needs of the dairy operation. Naturally, if the animals are kept
‘healthy’ it will enhance profitability, reduce cost of milk production and the milk from
such animals would also be wholesome for the consumers. The new strategy calls for
radical change in the way the animal health personnel provide services to the farmers.
Many developed countries have achieved success in this direction, but due to several
reasons, this could not be even initiated in India. If we have to face competition from the
world players in dairy, the following new approach should be adopted.
(1) Animals are continuously monitored by maintaining data of individual animals
and analysis on herd-basis.
(2) Common-source problems, such as, nutritional deficiencies, sub-clinical
infections and sub fertility are predicted, investigated and corrective measures are
taken to resolve the primary causal factors.
(3) Problems are predicted based on calculation of epidemiological rates well before
any clinical signs or damage is done. The system relies more on correction of
management, husbandry, feed, minerals, etc., rather than only use of drugs or
hormones.
(4) The dairy management activities are not farmer-perceived but predicted based on
the records. The problems therefore can be identified at the earliest. The program
encourages participation of farmers in health maintenance.
The central issue is maintaining individual animal data in a format that can be
compiled and analyzed into rates and indices. With introduction of computers it has
become easy to organize the farm data, but unfortunately no such software is
available that can meet Indian (and also other developing countries) demands.
Vetindia Infotech Solutions, Mumbai, in collaboration with the Department of
Medicine, Bombay Veterinary College, affiliated to Maharashtra Animal and Fishery
Sciences University, has developed a cow / buffalo herd management software that is
tailor-made to satisfy the needs of the Indian dairy industry. This is the first such
software available for the dairy farmers and would also be useful to dairy industry of the
neighboring countries.
Major Characteristics:
The software is window-based and provides the computing and analysis strength
of Visual Basic and Access/MS-SQL. It is icon / menu driven hence even a moderately
literate farmer can operate the software without any difficulty.
 The software maintains life-time records of animals in the farm
 The records of cows and buffaloes can be maintained simultaneously but the data is
automatically analyzed separately.
 The records of all categories of animals, such as, calves, heifers, adults, breeding
bulls and working bullocks can be maintained.
 The records of culled, sold or died animals maintained in archive files that can be
retrieved easily to analyze the data
Modules of ‘Herdman’:
Herdman consists of various modules to assist the dairy farm operations. These can be
summarized as under:
Action List
This provides the daily action
schedule for the farmers. Based on
the default values and the
individual animal data Herdman
generates the list of animals
scheduled for various Veterinary
activities, such as, check for heat,
check for pregnancy I, check for
pregnancy II, animals for drying
off, animals for steaming up,
animals due for calving, due for
vaccination, due for Deworming
and due for insurance. With this
the farm operation becomes
predictive.
Alarm List
‘Herdman’ generates list of animals
currently in the herd/lot that are not
performing optimum as per the
default parameters. This generates
alarm list of heifers that have not
shown heat, calved animals that
have not shown first heat, animals
with fertility problems, animals not
achieving peak yield in the desired
period, animals with low milk yield
per lactation day, animals
with
longer open days, animals with
lower 100-days production, animals
with a longer inter-calving interval.
Individual animal records:
Reports
Semen Straw Records:
Treatment
The software maintains all possible
records of individual animals, such
as, administrative details, parent,
breeding, production, etc. Such a
data is necessary to select good
productive animals for further
breeding. Herdman is the first step
towards creation of a database of
productive animals. The individual
animal data can be transferred with
the transfer of the animal to any
other owner.
‘Herdman’
is
capable
of
generating several reports that are
either for the current date or for the
desired period. Reports such as,
administrative, milk production,
breeding, due for calving, salvage,
semen utilization, heifer, calves,
etc., can be generated with a click.
Every report also provides a
summary report of the herd or lot.
Herdman’ also automatically
maintains semen straw or bull
records. Very time a straw from a
bull is used, the records for straw
and the bulls are updated and once
the animal is confirmed pregnant,
the pregnancy is added in the
record of the bull. Herdman also
produces the bull performance
report for the farm. Consolidation
of such report from all the farms /
village enables calculation of bull
indices.
‘Herdman’ maintains lifetime
records of all the treatment carried
out in individual animal. The old
treatment records can be retrieved
with a click. This also enables
calculation of true disease rates in
the farm. When
antibiotics
are used, the software also warns
the farmers about the residues
within the withdrawal period.
Metabolic profiling:
Herd Indices
Production
Many software currently available
do
not have this facility.
Metabolic profiling of animals is an
important activity that enables
identification
of
nutrition,
management and hygiene related
problems in the herd. Herdman
provides a module that assists in
determining the sample
size,
Random selection of the
animals
from
different
physiological groups and analysis
of the data as mean + standard
deviation. The on-line help enables
the veterinarian to compare and
interpret the indices.
Herdman
also
calculates
production and reproduction-based
herd indices (as
mean
+
Standard deviation) for each lot or
herd.
This is the unique
feature of this software.
Herd indices, such as, average milk
yield per lactation day, average
yield per lactating animal, peak
yield, days to peak
yield,
average lactation length, etc., can
be calculated. The reproductionrelated indices that can be
calculated are: mean age for first
heat in heifers, mean age of calving
in heifers, mean days after calving
to first heat, mean conception rate,
mean A.I. per conception, etc.
Reproduction
Many commercial dairy farmers in
India formulate their own cattle
feed. Herdman provides a module
that can be used to prepare a
balanced concentrate feed. Based
on the rates of feeding to different
categories of animals (lactating,
dry, pregnant, etc.) Herdman
generates a feeding schedule.
FEED FORMULATION
This ensures that the animals get
right quantity of feed. Herdman
also calculates cost of feed
prepared and cost of feeding
individual animal in the farm.
Herdman also provides the data on
proximate analysis of commonly
used feed ingredients and fodder.
The software is thus also a
information source for the farm
managers.
FEED CHART
Software integration:
It is possible to integrate or provide data merging facility with any window-based
software currently used for other purposes, such as, progeny testing, epidemiological
mapping, GIS- or Info map-based data modules.
Herdman can easily be interfaced with milking machines, milk parlor or
automatic feeding machines.
For cooperative dairies an analogous version ‘Herdmancoop’ is also
available. Data of individual village / county dairy society can be maintained. This
data is amenable to consolidation for onward submission to upper administrative
hierarchies. For example, data from a village / herds can be consolidated at the
veterinarian level, a veterinarian level data at the block level, then at the district
level and finally at the state level. ‘Herdman’ is a combination of various
applications and hence comprehensive. It is hoped that ‘ Herdman’ would provide
all the solutions to take the dairy industry into an era of e-dairy herd management.
FOR FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT:
Infovet; 302 SHARIQ APT. TAKOLI, KALWE, THANE,
INDIA 400 605: herdmancom@hotmail.com