Towards the end of the season, you typically start thinking about which cows to cull, and these culling decisions are usually influenced by a range of different factors. If your MINDA records are up to date i.e. you have pregnancy diagnosis results, Health Records, parentage and herd test information etc then you can utilise MINDA reports to help identify cows for your cull list.

If you need to update your records, you can add Events via:

The Culling Guide helps you identify animals you may want to consider culling. It allows you to select a Group, then add Criteria (which acts like a filter) to narrow down animals. For example, say you cull on:

you can add them all as a criteria and set the ranges and priority (high, medium, low) for each. The Culling Guide will then automatically select the animals that meet your set criteria (blue tick beside their animal ID).

This report uses your herd test results to show the Somatic Cell Count (SCC) for your animals. By using this report, you can see how an animals SCC has been trending and if they have been exceeding SCC thresholds. If you're culling on SCC/mastitis then this report lets you go into more detail.

Using this graph you can see your herds age structure compared to Dairy NZ's optimal. The grey bars are the optimal age structure and considers young and mature cow production while the blue bars are your herd. This graph helps you see if you have a lot more older animals in your herd that you might want to consider culling and even dive into their performance.

The Herd Age Structure graph can be found under the Genetics tab in Herd Management.

Once you've culled your animals, make sure to record this in MINDA to keep your records up to date. You can remove animal in MINDA via the: