Progressive Times Fall 2015 MN Select Sires Volume1

Fall 2015

Monitoring Repro & Health

CowManager:

Dedicated & Unbiased
Employee 24/7

O

riginally very skeptical that the CowManager cow monitoring
system would actually
work, Mike Johnson of
Trailside Holsteins, Fountain, Minnesota, decided
to “test” it by purchasing
20 tags. Mike
is now a firm
believer and all
breeding cows
have tags. The
well-managed
Trailside Holsteins
LLC has 500 cows
on sand-bedded
free stalls and
farms 1,200 acres
of corn and alfalfa
hay. Trailside is
family owned and
operated by Jon,
his son Mike and
wife Margaret.
They are passionate about creating
a quality product
while taking care
of their cattle,
community, environment, family,
and future generations.

Relying On
Real-Time Info
24/7

Mike Johnson gets help with the CowManager
tags from the next generation at Trailside
Holsteins LLC, Fountain, MN: one-year-old
Levi and three-year-old Sawyer.

Initially, Mike
purchased CowManager to increase
heat detection and reduce hormone
usage, but this system has given

him that and so much more. They
were considering hiring a herdsperson to monitor herd health because
there just weren’t enough hours in
a day to do a good job. Mike adds,
“To be able to look up any cow, at
any time, on my phone and make
decisions about her in real time
when I am at cow side or at home
has been very beneficial to me.”
Mike admits that all the data can
be overwhelming at times. Now that
he’s familiar with the system, Mike
has become reliant on the information and would be challenged to
manage without it.

Saving Money In Several
Areas With CowManager

Prior to investing in CowManager, Trailside had been utilizing a
fully timed A.I. program (PreSynch,
OvSynch, ReSynch). In addition, for
a year they had been tail chalking to
help increase the heat detection rate.
Since starting to breed the cows
utilizing CowManager in January
2015, the repro program has been
so successful that Mike has gradually implemented several changes:
1. Shots (and related costs) have
been reduced - breeding more
cows off natural heats
a. Catching more cows in heat
after the Voluntary Waiting
Period (VWP)
b. The first prostaglandin shots
were moved back to 58 DIM
and 72 DIM and cows are
bred off of them. If cows are
not inseminated by 86 DIM,