On a dairy farm, every minute matters. You and your team work hard to ensure your herd is happy, healthy and profitable. But what if you could do more with your technology to lighten the load and give you time back in your day?
Take something as simple as prepping a herd check worklist. If you spend 30 minutes a day at a computer checking data and printing lists, that adds up to 3.5 hours a week — or 182 hours a year — just getting ready to do the real work. Imagine reclaiming that time with scheduled, automated reports that are ready and waiting for you when the day starts.
Efficiency like that doesn’t happen by accident. It starts with a few intentional steps. Here are five ways to make your herd management technology work harder so your team doesn’t have to.
1. Start with the basics: Scheduled reports and worklists
Repetitive tasks such as herd checks, vaccinations and breeding lists don’t need to be built from scratch. By setting up automated, scheduled lists, your team starts each day with a clear action plan, eliminating office time. Also, add analysis reports to your monthly monitoring reports to track trends over time. These lists reduce downtime, improve task accuracy and give everyone peace of mind that less animals get missed.
2. Use integrations to multiply your efforts
Connecting your herd management software with tools like sort gates, activity monitors and lameness detection systems helps consolidate workflows and eliminate extra trips through the barn and to the office to enter data. Fewer trips back and forth mean less duplicating data, fewer errors and more time for other priorities. Well-planned integrations also reduce lockups and improve cow comfort.
3. Go mobile and go cowside
Mobile data access and electronic identification (EID) technology let your team work smarter in the moment. Whether scanning RFID tags to identify animals or recording treatments from their phones, employees can complete tasks cowside — no paper, transcription or backtracking. Preloading task lists onto mobile devices can even eliminate the daily trip to the office. That’s another 30 minutes back in your day.
4. Make the most of your parlor time
For rotary parlors, ParlorBoss displays task lists right on the platform, allowing your team to complete them during milking. This eliminates the need to search for cows later, reduces lockup time and improves compliance for tasks such as reproduction shots. Your cows stay comfortable, and your team stays productive.
Additionally, daily parlor reports can be a powerful tool for spotting inefficiencies, strengthening team performance and driving consistent gains in milk quality and production. Actively reviewing your parlor performance reports can ensure you’re not leaving any milk on the table.
5. Lean on your support team
Efficiency doesn’t stop at setup. With personalized onboarding, 24/7 support and a dedicated team of farm performance consultants, VAS helps you get more out of the tools you already use.
Even if you’re not sure what’s possible, our experts can review your workflows and uncover time-saving opportunities you might be missing. Saving 30 minutes a day can add up and make a significant difference.
Ready to save time and do more with less?
Visit VAS.com or contact your VAS farm performance consultant to discover how the right technology setup can help you make every minute count.
VAS is the global market leader in connected farm management systems. For more than 40 years, VAS has been the operating system of choice for the most innovative dairies. VAS' software and information solutions help collect and connect a farm's data – from herd management to feed performance, tracking and more. These insights are a source of truth, empowering producers and their trusted advisors to make profit-driven and sustainable management decisions. At the forefront of thought leadership within the dairy industry, VAS is trusted by the producers we serve and the greater dairy community.
