Your DelPro FarmManager just got an upgrade!

Never forget to refresh the monitor board or your favourite report again

The monitor board is the centre of your DelPro FarmManager. It is crucial that whenever you access information through the monitor board it presents information updated in real time. To make sure you never forget to refresh the information again, we implemented a feature that enables the monitor board to be refreshed at your chosen interval. Whenever you come back from the barn and you look at the monitor board again, you are sure the find the most up to date information you need. You can activate this feature within the farm settings menu, “General” tab – activate the setting “Monitor Board Auto Refresh”. 

In addition, we have also added this feature for reports that you keep open in FarmManager. You can therefore be sure that the information presented in your favourite report is always up to date, without having to reopen or refresh it! Just select the desired refresh interval within the report.

Speed up the events you record every day with a new WorkFlow

Have you ever wondered if you could change an animals group when recording a dry-off event? Now through the batch entry you can do this. You can also add a sort event (for parlour/rotary only). Within the “Batch Entry” mode when recording an animal event, you now have the ability to also activate the “Change group”, and/or the “Sort” views. For example: When you dry-off a group of animals, you add a dry-off event to those cows, most likely change them from the milking group to a dry cow group and want to sort once. So, now in FarmManager 5.5, after you save the dry-off event the window to add a group change opens automatically followed by the window to add a sort once. This will speed up the way you are able to record multiple events in one go!

Thumbs up or down? Record animal health checks

We understand that the transition period is the most important period of your animals’ lactation. Whenever you implement a set routine to inspect every fresh animal daily for let’s say the first week (invited through a vet visit) – at the end of the week you have the possibility to record a “health check event”. This is a NEW event type added in DelPro FarmManager 5.5. For the health check event you have two possible outcomes:

1. the cow is health
2. the cow is not healthy.

When an animal is found to be not healthy you have the choice to:

1. Add a health treatment event for the animal
2. invite the animal to the next planned vet visit
3. just record the “not healthy” event which allows you to work with additional report items and filters to keep track of the animal effectively. This will keep the focus on those cows that need it most, your fresh cows!!

Combine multiple vaccination protocols for one visit

When we go into the barn and work with our animals, it is most practical to have our “to-dos” clearly visible in one place. Whilst working with the vaccination module we realized that it would even be better if we could combine different protocols, for different animal groups, for let’s say; treating calves, heifers, lactating and dry animals within the same visit. What we introduce here in DelPro FarmManager 5.5 is the ability to link multiple protocols to the same visit. Rather than having to plan multiple visits, resulting in multiple reports, you now only have to create one vaccination visit. Through the invited animals window you are then able to easily report back when the vaccination is complete. Another practical example is having two protocols created for hoof trimming with; one protocol one for lactating cows, trimmed 2 times in the lactation and a second protocol when cows are dried off – within one report.

Whenever you face non-cyclic cows, you can add them to a timed AI protocol

One of your biggest challenges for a profitable dairy is to make sure your animals are pregnant. Whilst you have multiple tools in DelPro to find your cows in heat, to make sure they are inseminated to start with, you will always have cows that are non-cyclic. She could be prolonged anoestrus or face problems with cysts. Whatever the diagnosis from your DeLaval Herd Navigator or veterinarian, you can now easily invite animals to timed AI protocols. This way you make sure you keep cows in focus and with daily reminders to treat them for the abnormality to get them in calf sooner.

Treatment category

The above two features that we described showed the improved functionality for vaccination protocols and the timed AI module. Having more animals treated through those protocols we also believed it was time to give more flexibility in order to analyse all the “treated” animals overtime. This means that we want to make sure that records for animals treated for mastitis, or according to a timed AI protocol are separated from those treated for timed AI or vaccination. To do this we introduced the function that categorizes a treatment as

1. a normal health treatment
2. Vaccination treatment
3. timed AI treatment.

Each treatment can only be active for one of the categories at a time – giving you as a result a clear overview if a treatment was due to illness, vaccinations or timed AI treatments. If treatments in the past were part of a vaccination protocol or a timed AI protocol, DelPro will automatically use that information to implement the right category per the treatment already existing.

The little details matter

The above improvements and new features is not all that has been added to DelPro FarmManager 5.5. For your reference, you will find below a short overview of additional improvements that might be of interest to you – because we know the little details also matter.

• For automatic ration calculation, we have now designed a new report that shows cows with an unsuccessful ration changes according to the calculation. This report is now by default on your monitor board.
• The order of the events that you can record is now following a standard in how we believe it will fit your routines best. With the group change, the most frequently used event, presented first.
• The graphs presented for each animal is improved to create greater visibility on different reproduction events. You will find different colours per reproduction event, abortion events are now visible and you get details of health treatments within the graph.
• Additional report items are also added with this release. You will now find data on: Last days dry (last lactation), Exit date and age at first calving.
• You can now also save a filter built inside the report as a “user defined filter”. This allows you to re-use the filter in other reports you created.
• The vet visit gives you more options to record events directly from the invited animals window. The new “health check” function is incorporated here.
• The Herd event list has more columns to choose from. Right click on a column and choose “column chooser”.
• Within the Semen inventory module, we have implemented features that gives you the option to manage: Split semen straws, label semen as being sexed semen and you can record the semen company.
• It is now also possible to copy/paste created SOPs so you can reuse and adjust your SOPs quicker.

Note: For any questions relating to compatibility of DelPro FarmManager 5.5 with your farm, please contact your DeLaval representative.