Mission Goals and Tactics

National Dair y Her d Infor mation A s sociation
Arizona DHIA
Phone: 480-894-0156
Dairy Lab Services
Phone: 563-557-7421
Dairy One Cooperative Inc.
Phone: 607-257-1272
DHI Cooperative Inc.
Phone: 800-DHI-OHIO
Idaho DHIA
Phone: 208-733-6372, ext. 104
Indiana State Dairy Assn.
Phone: 765-494-8025
Lancaster DHIA
Phone: 717-665-5960
Minnesota DHIA
Phone: 763-682-1091
NorthStar Cooperative
DHI Services
Phone: 800-471-3716
Puerto Rico DHIA
Phone: 787-544-6690
Rocky Mountain DHIA
Phone: 435-374-0218
Tennessee DHIA
Phone: 865-974-7289
Texas DHIA
Phone: 806-651-8750
United Federation of DHIAs
Phone: 540-552-2541
Vermont DHIA
Phone: 802-295-3379
Washington State DHIA
Phone: 360-755-0375
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Mission Goals and Tacti
DHI equals Management
There are several sources for the Mission,
Goals and Tactics tagline but let’s go with
referencing the tagline from the Cornell ProDairy program. These three key elements
are part of management, which you can see
come from the first letters of the words in
the tagline and have the abbreviation MGT
for management. Key elements in any
management program are measurements,
data and information to make decisions.
In today’s dairy farming operations these
management decisions can be about
feeding, breeding, culling, sire selection,
manure management, SCC levels, crop
production, milking systems and the list
goes on. But the key term is management
and management of these areas is driven
by decisions that have some basis of
measurement, metrics or benchmarks. All
of the areas contribute to the production of
milk, fat and protein that is produced to feed
a hungry world. Cows, herds, people and
farms all need to be managed on a regular
basis.
At the 2009 American Dairy Science
Association Discover Conference on Dairy
Herd Analytics, Robert Lewis, a business
consultant, presented the concept of
evidence based decision making which has
clear building blocks:
• Clear goals
• Clear definitions
• Clear data (evidence)
• Clear decisions
• Clear actions
March 2014 DAIRYBUSINESSEAST
Promotional Tape Measure from the 1980’s
Lewis also presented during the 2009
Discovery Conference that measuring is the
foundation of decisions. He also presented
the Three Fallacies of Measurement:
• Measuring the right things wrongly – will
lead to wrong results
• Measuring the wrong things rightly or
wrongly – will lead to the wrong results
• Measuring unimportant things – will lead
to failure to get important results
Dairy farms want to have clear goals,
definitions and data while measuring the
right things correctly and accurately.
Foundation of DHI System
Dairy cow and herd measurements with
correctness and accuracy are the foundation
of the DHI system. DHI programs can be
carried out based on farms’ data needs, use
and desire to have benchmarks available to
manage and make decisions for the herd
and farm. DHI field staff and farm personnel
are key points of data capture and obtaining
milk samples. These data and samples
flowing into the system, being processed,
analyzed and data returned for on-farm use
is the result of dairy farm commitment to
a system that returns value to the farm for
management of cows and the herd. This is a
farm size neutral return as it can be applied to
any size herd or group of dairy cows.
Current Opportunities in the DHI Sector
There are many systems that measure
www.dairybusiness.com
actics
on-farm values, but the samples going to
DHI labs provide a wealth of information
ranging from fat, protein, somatic cells
to Johnes’ disease results. So basically
unlocking the data contained in the
milk sample can help manage the dairy
herd for economic and health factors,
which are all key factors in today’s dairy
production system. Dairy farms want to
manage with evidence to take advantage
of the technology that is available in
decision making. Many farms hear
and see a lot about genetics with all
the promotional information but even
genetics is more about management of
genetics than pure genetics in your dairy
herd.
DHI field service, Labs and Dairy
Records Processing Centers (DRPCs) all
have services and tools that benefit dairy
herds in the measurement proccess.
These products can range frombe quick
return of SCC reports indicating cows
that need further evaluation to genetic
or genomic reports to help with chosing
replacement heifers for the herd. Find
further DHI resources at www.dhia.org
and www.quality-certification.com
www.dairybusiness.com
From the 1980’s DHI packet tape measure the slogan was:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”
Perhaps in 2014 better wording would be:
“If you don’t measure it and measure it accurately, you can’t
do good management”
March 2014 DAIRYBUSINESSEAST
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