Adjusted Corrected Milk

Abstract

Production medicine programs need a better yardstick. Production medicine programs need a basic unit of measurement. We need something precise, something as discrete as an inch, a fetal membrane slip, or a beta-hemolytic zone.

It isn't that we don't have numbers. No, our OHi reports have plenty of numbers. We have rolling herd averages, standardized mature equivalents, and income over feed costs. We have heat detection indexes. That isn't the problem. The problem is that some of these numbers seem to lack immediacy, directness, and sometimes accuracy.

My purpose here is not to belittle. Rather, I want to comment on using average milk production per day as a monitor of response to production medicine programs.