The February Dairy Manager Discussion group meetings will be held on Thursday, Feb. 18 at Jake’s Steakhouse located at 6655 E. Lincoln Way, Wooster. Participants will order and pay for their own meals. The “established” dairy manager group meeting is scheduled for 12:15 pm and the “dairy managers of tomorrow” group is scheduled for 7:00 pm. Gustavo Schuenemann, OSU Extension dairy veterinarian will be the speaker for both groups but presenting a different topic for each group.
For the 12:15 pm group, Dr. Schuenemann will be presenting the topic; “Helping Employees be Successful: Establishing and Supporting Good Communication on the Farm.” In his work as a veterinarian Dr. Schuenemann was finding many herd health and herd production problems could be traced back to farm employees and managers not being consistent in good management practices, not doing tasks in a timely manner, or even just plain doing the wrong thing. When he began to talk with employees and ask them about what they were or were not doing he discovered that communication problems; miscommunication, misunderstanding, language barriers and personality conflicts were the real root causes of many herd health and production problems. This will be a good session for any dairy business that employs and/or works with employees.
During the 7:00 pm meeting Schuenemann will be discussing and demonstrating a calving management app designed for hand-held smart devices. The eCalving APP was developed to capture calving-related events associated with stillbirth and calf development. Novel components of the APP include: 1) Login screen for individual herds, 2) Capture of selected calving-related events for both dam and calf (e.g., parity, breed, BCS, hygiene of perineum, calving ease, sex of calf, presentation, personnel), 3) Rolling list of active cows with an alarm to monitor calving progress and time in labor, 4) Rolling list of active calves (single or multiple) within 24 h after birth, and 5) Colostrum management practices (quality, quantity, time of administration, and personnel) as well as calf vigor and birth weights.