Udder health and communication

At this moment we are in the middle of an International Conference we organized on Udder Health and Communication. This conference is organized by the Dutch Udder Health Center (UGCN), GD Animal Health Service, the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University and our Business Economics group at Wageningen University.

The idea behind this conference is that there is a lot of technical knowledge out there. We have the knowledge to prevent a large part (more than 75 %) of the udder health problems that are around on our farms. Additional knowledge is necessary for the additional 25 or less %.

So a large part of the udder health problems can be solved when currently available knowledge is applied. If we want to have an improved udder health, we have to motivate farmers to further control udder health. Farmers need to be motivated. An important motivator is economics: mastitis costs money (see our recent overview and the papers of Kirsten Huijps and Tariq Halasa). By changing incentives, for instance by rewarding farmers for better udder health (carrot) or giving penalties for bad udder health (stick), udder health can certainly be improved. However, money is no the only thing that motivates farmers. For instance, pleasure in work is an important motivator as well (see paper of Natasha Valeeva). So if we want to change the behaviour of dairy farmers we need to motivate them. Communication plays an essential role in that. Recently Theo Lam gave an overview of the current knowledge on that.

Because we learned that worldwide the interest in "how to communciate to farmers in order to improve udder health" is increasing we organised the conference. I got a couple of thoughts that made me wonder. Pieter Hemels (owner of a large communication firm, Hemels van der Hart) gave a keynote presentation and he indicated that an important aspect is the question: "what's in it for me". Many of the mastitis programs need the involvement of intermedial people, for instance veterinarians. So we should not only look at the dairy farmers: what's in it for them when they improve udder health, but also to the veterinarians: what's in it for them when they participate in a udder health improvement program. These questions should be asked during the setup of a program. "What's in it" can be very economically oriented: how much more profit do I make, but it can also be on other area's: my work becomes more fun, or I am gaining respect from my fellow veterinarians.

All in all a very interesting topic, which is way too wide to be covered in a simple posting to my Blog. For those interested, the proceedings of the conference are published as book.

Claw health, animal welfare and economics

When looking at production diseases in dairy cattle, the big four are: mastitis, reproduction, foot disorders and metabolic disorders. All of these disease problems have the same aspects, they are multi-factorial, which means that there might be different causes, different risk factors, different treatments and different preventive measures. This makes them complex. Of these diseases, mastitis receives the most attention. Mastitis is directly affecting the quality of milk and most probably the most expensive of these.

However, foot disorders are believed to be the most important production disease affecting cow welfare. Research shows that there is a high prevalence of foot disorders (up to 80 %) and foot disorders have a long duration and can be very painful.

Together with prof. Elsbeth Stassen, who holds the chair of Animals and Society in the department of Animal Sciences of Wageningen University, I advise Marielle Bruijnis, a PhD student who studies welfare and economic effects of foot disorders. A first thing Marielle studied was the economics of foot disorders. She showed that on average, foot disorders cost € 53 per average cow on the farm per year. This is an average, there might be large differences between farms because of a different prevalence, but also because of natural variation. Interesting was, that a relatively large proportion of these costs are caused by subclinical (not directly visible) foot disorders. Moreover, most of the costs are caused by milk production losses and increased risk of culling. This means that dairy farmers might very well underestimate the costs associated with foot disorders. These data have been published in a Journal of Dairy Science paper (volume 93; pages 2419-2432) and in a farmers journal (Veeteelt 27 (13): 50-52).

Marielle has continued her work estimating the welfare effect of different foot disorders (a paper on this has just been accepted for publication, so I will tell more about this later on) and has been combining the economics of foot disorders with the economics of foot disorders. The underlying question was that if the most important foot disorders (from an economic point of view) was less important from a welfare point of view, farmers might improve claw health, thinking they improved welfare also, but the latter should not necessarily be true. Fortunately, the economic and welfare effects of different claw disorders were quite well correlated. Marielle recently presented that at the UFAW (Universities Federation for Animal Welfare) conference and I had to pleasure to present the same data on the IDF World Dairy Summit, held in Parma in October 2011. You can find the slides and some more precise data on slideshare.

Economics of reproduction: Background and tools

A management area with constant discussion, at least in the Netherlands, is the area of reproduction. Twenty years or so ago, it seemed clear: the optimal calving interval is a short calving interval and farmers should strive for a calving interval of 365 days. However, things changed in the meantime. Milk production increased, the persistency of milk production changed and market circumstances changed. The average calving interval increased from 1993 (394 days) to 2010 (418 days) with little less than a month.

Is this a problem? Well recent calculations show that under Dutch circumstances the net economic effect of an average (calving interval 407 days) vs a good (calving interval 362 days) is € 34 per cow per year. the difference of a good and a bad (calving interval 507 days) is € 231 per cow per year. I would conclude that there is certainly economic benefit to be gained by improving the calving interval, especially because these losses are calculated for Dutch quota circumstances, where the costs of a lower milk production per cow per year are relatively low.

These data are based on a detailed dynamic stochastic simulation model, developed by Chaidate Inchaisri and published in the scientific journal Theriogenology.  Chaidate is from the Faculty of Veterinary Science of Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. He is finishing his PhD on epidemiology and economics at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University. The model developed by chaidate simulates single cows throughout the reproductive period, and follows these cows with time intervals of 1 week. The economic evaluation does include lower milk production, inseminations, less calves for sale or rearing and culling. Moreover, it includes also beneficial effects of a longer calving interval such as less costs due to calvings, or less diseases because of a lower number of transitions. It is known that the transition period is a high risk period for a number of diseases such as ketosis and mastitis, but this is never taken into account in calculations with regard to reproduction so far.

The model developed by Chaidate is quite complex and can not easily be used by individual farmers or advisors. Therefore, Wilma Steeneveld (Chair group Business Economics of Wageningen University) developed a relatively straightforward calculation tool to be used by farmers and their advisors. It can be found on this website. Given the potential benefits of improvement of reproduction on dairy farmers it is my advise to download this tool and see what can be gained on your farm.

Economics young stock rearing (in Dutch)

I put a new presentation on slideshare. In my blog underneath some background information on economics of young stock rearing

Economics young stock rearing (in Dutch)

View more presentations from Henk Hogeveen.

Young stock rearing: An undervalued activity

The first topic for my blog is youngstock rearing. This is a bit of a coincidence, because I chose this topic based on a presentation I gave recently for the CRV "young farmers" day in Temse (Belgium) a presentation on the economics of young stock raising (in Dutch). However, the topic of young stock raising is a good topic to start with. It is an activity that is undervalued by many many dairy farmers all over the world. We do agree that good quality heifers are important for the dairy farm, as replacement of older cows that are culled. But for most dairy farmers, the process of getting these high quality heifers is one of long planning. It takes 2 years to raise a heifer. So decisions taken, have their effect a long time later. Many other decisions that a herdsman take, have a much more immediate effect. Good young stock rearing, however, is an important activity that does need the attention of the dairymen and the veterinarians world wide.

Besides the quality of heifers (which is not something I am expert in), there is an economic side of youngstock raising. And again, this is something that is underestimated by many people. Many herdsman do not know the costs of raising a heifer. In most accounting systems (at least in the Netherlands), the costs for young stock raising are not distinguished, so the feeding costs are just part of the (much larger) feeding bill, labour costs are just part of labour  etc. While recent calculations by our PhD student Norhariani (Yanie) Mohd Nor indicate that rearing one fresh heifer costs € 1.540. Without labour and housing, these costs are € 861. These calculations have been submitted for publication.  A preliminary version of this publication (with a little different outcomes) has been published in the proceedings of the Workshop on Animal Health Economics, held last year in Nantes. Yani is from the University Putra Malaysia and doing a PhD at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht Univesity, in close collaboration with the chair group Business Economics of Wageningen University. Her topic is economics of young stock management and she is advised by Wilma Steeneveld, Monique Mourtis and myself

In general, there are two major ways that the costs of young stock rearing can be reduced:

1. Decrease the calving age. On average, in the Netherlands, heifers calf at an age of 27 months, while 24 months is optimal. Suppose that you need, for a farm of 100 dairy cows, 30 replacement animals per year. With a calving age of 27 months, you'll have a little more than 67 head of youngstock on your farm. With a calving age of 24 months, this number is 60, which is a saving of approximately 12 % on the costs of young stock rearing. Over and over, research has shown that it is very well possible to raise a well developed heifer, with a good production capacity in 24 months.

2. With a lower culling rate, less replacement heifers are necessary. This is a very direct method to save in costs for young stock rearing.

In short, rearing young stock deserves more attention than it often gets. Costs of young stock rearing are hidden and can easily be reduced.

The start of another Blog

Well this is it, my first Blog posting. Why do I think that yet another Blog will add something useful to the enormous contents of the web? In this first blog I will try to explain.

I am working at Wageningen University, chairgroup Business Economics http://www.bec.wur.nl/. I am also associated with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University www.uu.nl/vet. My research and teaching fields are indeed between those two working places: Animal Health Management. As a university staff member we should publish our work in scientific (peer-reviewed) journals. These journals are mostly read by fellow academics and not by the people that have to apply our work. Personally I like to work with research questions where I can see the final application. Contact with the field of application is important and besides publishing in scientific journals I think it is useful to publish in trade journals.

Now that more and more information is on the internet, it is time to share our work on internet. Of course you can find our publications through our website (and many publications can be downloaded from there), but a blog opens possibilities to give some more comments and remarks.

It is my ambition to publish a blog on average once per month, following presentations that I gave, interesting research results that our group is generating or reacting on general news. With that I hope that this blog adds something useful to the information available on the web and that our research and teaching work can find the end-users in a different way.