Case Study: Health Protocol to Identify Lactating Dairy Cows with Metritis in Dairy Herds
A large conventional dairy herd (milking approximately 2,000 cows; DC305 is used to keep records) would like to screen all fresh cows for metritis 3 times per week (6, 8, and 10 DIM; each fresh cow would have 3 health screening opportunities). All cows are milked three times per day at approximately 8-hour intervals (6:00 am, 2:00 pm, and 10:00 pm) and headlocks are available in the fresh pen (1-25 DIM). The fresh pen is the first to enter the parlor at each milking time. The TMR is delivered twice per day at 6:00 am and 6:00 pm (feed push up every 2 hours). Due to labor scheduling conflicts and to minimize a drop in DM intake in postpartum cows (e.g., compromise lying time), the owner would like to perform the health screening protocol only during the week days (from Monday to Friday).
Specific request: Please develop the protocol (from screening to treatment) for metritis and place it into the calendar week. For this case situation, you can be flexible and schedule cows for metritis screening as “±1 DIM”.
- Using the calendar week (5 days), what day(s) of the week would you be screening cows for metritis?
- Which cows and how many would you be screening each day assuming there is an average of 6 calvings per day?
- How many workers are needed to implement the health protocol assuming 1 hour is available for each day?
- How would you print the list of fresh cows by DIM from DC305?