Young stock are the future of your herd so it’s important they are hitting their targets. If young stock are meeting their targets, it maximises their potential once they enter the herd as a milking animal. Once in the herd, you can monitor their milk production, reproductive performance and much more.
The MINDA Guide to Young Stock, will highlight the key areas/tools in MINDA that you can use when managing young stock including:
Weights
Heifer growth is best measured by liveweight and it's important that heifers are reared to achieve their livestock targets. Why? If heifers are below target, this can cause flow-on effects such as slower in calf rates resulting in lower liveweight at calving and reduced fertility during the next mating period.
How often should I weigh my heifers?
DairyNZ's Heifer Weighing article describes best practice as being every 4-8 weeks, a minimum of every 12 weeks. This allows you to monitor growth and spot issues early on.
How do I record liveweights in MINDA?
You can record liveweights in MINDA via the:
How do I view weights in MINDA?
Once you've imported liveweights into MINDA, you can use MINDA Weights to track weight/weight gain, proactively manage their progress and identify any animals falling behind. To learn more, check out our article Getting to know MINDA Weights.
Uncertain Sires
If you have young stock that don't have their complete parentage (dam & sire), this can negatively affect the indexes (BW & PW), giving you an inaccurate representation of an animals true potential. Using reports in MINDA, you can check if any young stock have uncertain sires and work on getting this corrected.
How do I check if animals have uncertain sires?
By creating a Custom report and adding the Attribute Sire ID, you can see the sire details of all your young stock. If the Sire ID shows a # next to it, this means the sire parentage is uncertain.
If there is no bull code, this means the animal has no sire recorded at all. This could be a result of:
misrecording
unrecorded natural mating sire
missing AB record
If an animal has been mis-mothered, this can cause an animal to have uncertain or no sire parentage.
How do I fix uncertain sires?
The best way to fix animals with uncertain sires is to DNA test them. By taking a tissue punch from the animals ear, our Genemark lab will use the sample to analyse the animals DNA. We then search for potential sires and upload the confirmed sire parentage in MINDA for you.
Tip: If you plan to rear calves from natural mating bulls, DNA test the bulls before they leave the farm. This will help minimise uncertain sires for calves sired by these animals. To find out more about DNA testing, contact the Genemark team, or your local Agri-manager.
Available Tag Numbers
As you prepare for your 2 year olds to enter the milking herd, you'll need to check that your records are up to date i.e. all your culled cows have been removed from MINDA etc. Why? This ensures tag numbers are free to be allocated to your heifers.
How do I check available tag numbers?
In MINDA there's a report called Available Cow Numbers which gives you a list all available tag numbers (within your selected range). To see this report, head into Reporting > Available Cow Numbers.
How do I record removals/culls (to free up tag numbers)?
You can record removals in MINDA via the:
Tip: To keep your records as accurate and up to date as possible, record removals in MINDA as soon as animals have left the farm.
How do I record taggings?
Once you've physically tagged in your heifers, you'll need to record this in MINDA. You can record tag taggings in MINDA via the:
Tip: If you have a wand, make tagging even easier by connecting your wand to the app! This allows you to scan an animals EID instead of having to type their BID while you record their new tag.
Herd Summary
The Herd Summary report provides a summary of purchases, births, sold, culled and deaths for any selected season. It also shows the the number of animals in each age group, an age profile of the herd and a breakdown of indexes (BW, PW, LW) for each age group.
Why is this report helpful for managing young stock?
Use this report to sense check that the number of animals on farm match your records. This means you can proactively fix discrepancies rather than noticing too late i.e. during tagging.
The index breakdown gives you a quick visual of whether each generation is improving in genetic merit.
Tip: You want each age group to be better than the previous to maximise genetic gain.
Reproduction
When it comes to reproduction, young stock are expected to perform better than older animals. If your 2 year olds are:
under-performing
not hitting targets
performing worse than other age groups
This could mean there are some underlying issues that need investigating.
To check the reproductive performance of your 2 & 3 year olds, use the following graphs/insights:
Submission Rates by Age (Mating)
Calving Rate by Age (Calving)
BCS by Age (Body Condition Score)
In-calf Rates by Age (Pregnancy)
These insights are helpful when reviewing young stock management as it can highlight if any changes should be considered.
Rule of thumb:
Younger animals are expected to perform better than older animals. The older a cow is, the worse their reproductive performance is (as an age group). If your first and second calvers (2 & 3 year olds) do not have a higher 3 week submission rate or 6-week in-calf rate compared to your older cows, look into your young stock management
Targets for first calvers (2 year olds) will differ according to when their mating started:
First calvers with the same Mating Start Date as the herd have a 3 week target of 75% and 6 week target of 92%
First calvers mated one week ahead of the herd have a 3 week target of 82% and 6 week target of 96%
First calvers mated two weeks ahead of the herd have a 3 week target of 87% and 6 week target of 98%
First calvers mated three weeks ahead of the herd have a 3 week target of 92% and 6 week target of 99%
2 & 3 year olds should be calving at BCS 5.5. During mating, no more than 15% of cows should be below BCS 4.5.
Milk
If you herd test with LIC, you'll have access to MINDA milk which can provide helpful insights into young stock performance.
Low milk production across an age group (2 or 3 year olds) can indicate underlying issues which will need investigating. Furthermore, if the same group of animals are also under-performing reproductively, this means there is definitely issue(s) negatively impacting these animals.
Check out the following areas in MINDA Milk to see how your 2 year olds are going.
Test day production averages (overview)
This uses your most recent herd test to breakdown production averages across different age groups.
Herd lactation averages (overview)
Uses accumulated lactation to provide averages for all age groups for selected season.
2 Year Olds SCC Trends (SCC)
Provides overview of estimated bulk SCC compared to previous season herd test results.
2 Year Olds SCC Range (SCC)
Gives a quick overview of where the majority of your 2 year olds are sitting for SCC range.
Performance profile for 2 year olds (Best and Worst)
Uses the most recent Fonterra payout to compare the performance of the top, middle and bottom 2 year olds. You can also see comparisons for annual & daily income, kgs fat, kgs protein, total litres, and days in milk.
At LIC, the general rule of thumb is:
2 year olds have a target to produce around 70-80% milksolids compared to 4-8 year olds.
3 year olds have a target to produce 80-90% milksolids compared to 4-8 year olds.