Benchmark

A Beef Cow-Calf Production and Health Monitoring System

Abstract

Our bias is that the system should be sufficiently decentralized to meet the major needs of a variety of producers, yet have sufficient centralized planning and data sharing to allow the manipulation and analyses of the volume of data necessary to identify factors influencing health status and to assist in indentifying optimal health management strategies. Indeed the monitoring system and the health management program should be closely integrated. Continuous monitoring can also reveal the extent to which the objectives of health management have been reached. Certainly, the monitoring system should incorporate production data as well as data on disease. It is essential to quantify the effects of disease on production, and it is equally important to realize that the level of production (production efficiency if available) is often the best screening test for health status. In this paper we would like to portray systems that can serve the major needs of individual herd owners and veterinarians, and by data sharing can also meet the needs of provincial and federal governments for large scale monitoring systems.