As a parlor manager you have a lot of little details you have to pay attention to.  The details matter to keep quality milk harvest flowing and minimize health issues in the herd. 

If you have individual milk meters on your parlor and they are importing into BoviSync, there are a couple of good initial reports to look at. 

Average Milk and Deviation by Milking Unit  

Sample Report Output: 

 I review this report on a weekly basis.  Sorting by each column and reviewing the extreme ends to identify possible unit issues.  And if there are issues that are recurring, I shorten the days range to make it more sensitive (but noisier) and check daily.  I have also changed the format to a graph over time, then looked at each unit as a series.  This allows you to see rapid changes in a particular unit(s). 

When reviewing this data you need to keep in mind that there is no such thing as 100% unit calibration.  Keeping units within 5% of the average is good and generally achievable.  The milk that is measured per cow individually will never sum to the milk that leaves the farm.  You can compare these regularly and most parlors will allow you to make a general adjustment of all unit calibrations to get it to be in-line with the milk that leaves the farm. 

The way I interpret this report is first looking at the yields.  The milk yield per shift is what is the overall average milk yield measured by each unit.  In parallel parlors, where the distribution of cows to stalls isn’t random due to animal behavior, also pay close attention to the deviation from expected.  This unit uses the cow’s expected milk yield and the deviation from expectation.  When the behavior of cows stratifies them to particular units the overall unit averages can be expected to be a little different, the deviation can help with reducing that noise in the data. 

The peaks can help in two ways.  First, if I see a unit that is 20% below average milk, the peak is 20% below average, the deviation is 20% below average, and the duration is the same as the others.  That points first toward a calibration issue.  That unit is likely performing fine, but the milk readings are off by 20%.  On the other hand when I see lower peak, similar milk yield compared to the average, and longer duration; then I can see there is something going on with this unit that is causing poor milking resulting in long milking times and lower yield. 

In parlors that milk in batches (e.g. parallel, herringbone, not box-stall robots or rotaries), one other interesting report is to ungroup this report and look at long durations.  How many cows are being milked for long durations and all the other cows are waiting on that side for one more cow to finish up.  Eliminating these very long durations, can be beneficial to that individual cow, but more importantly it will increase cows per hour through the parlor.  This reduces the standing time milking and in the holding area, in addition to increasing parlor capacity and driving down milking labor hours. 

Other Knowledge Base Articles: