September 2002

Standard Operating Procedures...Your Dairy Team's Playbook
by Richard Stup, Human Resource Specialist - Penn State Dairy Alliance


The dairy business is much like football; the game is won or lost in the trenches. Just like an effective offensive line, your front line dairy workers need to be highly trained and able to execute their assignments consistently or the whole game plan will fall apart. Would a good football coach attempt to prepare his team without a playbook? Certainly not, and neither should you. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are the playbook for dairy workers and the managers who coach them.

It really doesn't matter if your workforce consists of two people or twenty, a well-managed dairy operation needs to have consistent routines for critical jobs such as milking, feeding and managing reproduction. Don't assume that having a small workforce means that everyone is doing jobs the same way. In many cases, family members milk cows in different ways. This is unsettling for the cows and it will limit milk production and milk quality. Likewise, variation in how cows are fed by different people will reduce herd performance. These negative impacts caused by variation in how farm jobs are carried out make it essential for each critical job to be standardized.

Another important reason to have SOPs is that they make training new employees or temporary help a lot easier. When a learner has written step-by-step instructions and perhaps a diagram or picture to refer to, dairy procedures become much easier to learn, remember and perform consistently. Small family operators should keep this in mind for the next time they want to hire temporary help so they can take a day off.

SOPs can be as simple or as complex as the job demands. The most important thing for you to remember is that you are an expert in the job. Others are likely to be novices, so you need to make the document simple, clear and easy to use. Try not to make any procedure longer than 7 - 10 steps. If you need more steps than this, break the procedure into several shorter sub-procedures. Don't be afraid to draw some diagrams or take pictures that will help to explain how things should be done.

The process you use when developing SOPs is important. You want to involve your workforce and your advisors as much as possible. Getting their input and advice will not only help you to create a better SOP, it will encourage them to have a sense of ownership in making the procedure successful.

Finally, make sure that you use performance goals for the SOP and that you have some way to measure progress. For example, a milking procedure might have performance goals related to how many cows per hour will be milked and what level of somatic cell count (SCC) will be achieved. Monitoring actual cows per hour and SCC and posting this information for everyone to see will help to build interest and enthusiasm for constant improvement in the whole workforce. After all, football wouldn't be very fun either if nobody kept score.

For more details about SOP formats and tips for developing them, see the Penn State publication "Standard Operating Procedures: A Writing Guide," at the website http://www.dairyalliance.org/hrmgmt/organizationaldev/odindex.shtml. Or call Penn State publications for a free copy at (814) 865-6713.*

NEW REPORT - Special Herd Summary

Starting this month we are providing a new monitoring system. The Special Herd Summary will be included in your monthly reports if it is triggered by the statistical process control(SPC). This first phase of the system is only monitoring SCC. In order to get this report, a herd has to have a SIGNIFICANT increase or decrease in Linear SCC or New Infections this test compared to last or it has to have a trend of increasing or decreasing SCC or New Infections over the last several tests. The most weight is put on the most current tests, yet is looking at the last 24 tests.

If you do receive this Special Herd Summary ask yourself some questions ...
ex: Why has the percent of new infections increased? Did you make a management change? How are you going to reduce the number of new infections to a normal level for your herd?

We are only expecting about 1% of our herds on test to receive this report during a month, so if you do receive this report and have questions on how to interpret it, please give us a call @ 1.800.827.3442 and ask for Val or Bruce.*

 Relative Forage Quality (RFQ) vs. Relative Forage Value (RFV)

Have you ever had two lots of alfalfa with the same relative feed value (RFV), one lot the cows milked great, ate it like candy and the other lot, the production dropped and the cows just didn't seem to like the forage. We might have the answer to this problem.

For years, relative feed value (RFV) index has been widely used to determine the quality of a forage and therefore add some objectivity to determining a market value for a forage. It was developed primarily for alfalfa forages. The most accurate method to determine forage quality is to feed the forage directly to a group of animals and see how they perform. Since this generally is not feasible, we can only estimate potential animal performance. While RFV has been very valuable for marketing alfalfa hay, it has not been as useful or reliable as would be desirable in predicting livestock performance and or building rations, especially for grasses and corn silage.

RFV is based on the concept of potential digestible dry matter intake of a forage by an animal. It is calculated from acid and neutral detergent fiber (ADF and NDF) concentrations in the forage. ADF concentration is used to estimate digestible dry matter (DDM) content, and NDF concentration is used to estimate potential dry matter intake (DMI) of the forage.

Measuring the actual digestibility of the fiber (NDF) component of forage provides a much better estimate of how the forage will perform in animal rations than does ADF. Fiber digestibility (NDFD) also affects potential intake. A new index called Relative Forage Quality (RFQ) has been developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin as a replacement for RFV to provide a better index of how a forage will perform in an animal diet.

The two indexes are conceptually the same except that Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) would replace DDM in the RFQ index calculation. TDN is estimated from the somewhat complicated calculation that includes an in vitro (in test tube) estimate of NDFD and crude protein, fatty acid, NDF and non-fibrous carbohydrate concentrations. DMI would be based on NDF, with an adjustment based on NDFD.

Several studies have been done on factors affecting digestible fiber. It's been found that fiber is more digestible when grown under cooler conditions, therefore first cutting will tend to have more highly digestible fiber than later cuttings growing under higher temperatures, the same crop grown in northern states or Canada will tend to have more digestible fiber than when grown in states to the south, Alfalfa grown in higher mountain valleys of the West will have more digestible fiber than that grown in lower valleys. It's also been found the fiber of leaves is both lower in content and higher in digestibility; therefore harvesting losses will result in greater RFQ loss than RFV. It's also been determined that RFQ is reduced by heat damage but RFV is not.

Stearns DHIA Laboratories is now offering several NIR packages that include both RFV and the new RFQ indexes. Relative Forage Quality (RFQ) is only available at this time on Hay, Mixed Hay and Haylage. Corn Silage should be available very soon. This is a 48-hour in lab analysis.

NIR NDFD Near Infra Red Analysis includes: Percent moisture and dry matter, crude protein, heat damaged protein, adjusted crude protein, acid detergent fiber, neutral detergent fiber, neutral detergent fiber digestibility, energy calculations, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, relative feed value, relative forage quality, protein solubility and Milk 2000 calculations for TDN, NEL and milk per ton. $18.00

NDFD Near Infra Red Analysis includes: Neutral detergent fiber digestibility, relative forage quality and Milk 2000 calculations for TDN, NEL and milk per ton. $10.00

NIR OARDC NDFD Near Infra Red Analyses includes: Percent moisture and dry matter, crude protein, heat damaged protein, adjusted crude protein, acid detergent fiber, neutral detergent fiber, neutral detergent fiber digestibility, fat, ash, lignin, net energy calculations, OARDC net energy calculation, calcium, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, relative feed value, relative forage quality, protein solubility, and Milk 2000 calculations for TDN, NEL and milk per ton $22.50

Ron Klindworth presented Outstanding Field Representative Award

DHIA service is as good as the person who shows up on your farm each sample day. Each year Minnesota DHIA recognizes the very best Field Representatives. They represent the top 6% of the DHIA field staff.

Ron Klindworth came to Minnesota DHIA from a dairy background. He has been testing since March 2000 and has been doing an exceptional job. Ron resides in Northfield and is testing herds in Rice, Dodge, Filmore, LeSueur counties and probably another county or 2 as well. He has come into the DHIA system and has been ready to take on anything that has been offered to him. Originally hired to test herds in Rice County, Ron has quickly spread his wings to cover many counties and word seems to have spread about his testing abilities as well.

Ron is currently testing 64 herds, 29 of which he has taken on as other Field Representatives have retired and he has also added 4 new herds on in the past year. There are a total of 5,713 cows in his unit at this time. Ron has seven Dairy Comp or Scout software users and seems to really enjoy working with some of the larger herds, which can be intimidating to test. Although he enjoys them, he still has the knowledge herds with smaller cow numbers are still important and does a great job of working with them as well.

Ron is visiting each of his herd owners an average of every 32.2 days and is getting the reports processed in a mere 1.98 days. For the above reasons, Ron has been chosen as one of our Outstanding Field Representatives in Minnesota this year and we are glad that he has chosen DHIA to work with.
Keep up the good work, Ron!*

 Corn Silage Burn Down Days - Stearns DHIA offering

WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO START CHOPPING CORN?
Until the end of Silage Season, you can bring in 6-8 stalks of corn from representative areas in the field and receive a moisture result within 1-2 hours. Bring them in Monday-Friday 8:00 - 3:00 and samples will be processed and run through an NIRS 5000 instrument. Besides an accurate moisture result, you will also receive protein, fibers, minerals and energy calculations. Cost of this test will be $5.00.

Bring in any additional feed, water or animal waste samples and receive a $2.00 discount off each sample. Must have a burn down sample in order to get the additional discount.

If there are any questions, please call Stearns DHIA @ 800.369.2697 or 320.352.2028*

 Cows for Sale

FOR SALE: One of McLeod Counties top herd selling entire herd. DHIA tested 22,600 lbs milk, 800+ fat, very young outstanding herd. Also selling Springing Heifers. Please call after 8:00 pm. Chuck Gutzmann 320-485-4621. (7/26/02)

Cows for Sale is a service of Minnesota DHIA. Members can advertise for just $2.50 per animal with a maximum of $50 per herd (good for 60 days). For more information, talk to your Field Rep or call us at 1.800.827.3442*