Nesikep
Well-known member
I'm wondering what sort of data y'all collect about your herd, and what you do with it, how you interpret and compile it, chart it and so on..
I collect the following info: Name, Tag, a unique ID number, DOB, sex, dam, sire, BW, and more recently weaning weight, cull year and cull ages of dams, twin, wether I consider the offspring as replacement material, and then if I have kept a heifer as a replacement, wether they are in stock or not, and the "original dam", and of course cull reasons.
From this I can gather total calves of each dam, total progeny of her and her daughters, average number of calves I've gotten from that line of cows by the time I culled them. I also get the average age of a cow's line that I have in stock, and I score them, as well as their progeny, then 'normalize' it so that the top score is 100. I also keep track of which generation they are. So far it's a good thing I have a widescreen monitor because I can still fit columns A through AH on it without scrolling.
Here's how I score the cow... I take the calves she's produced and raise it to the power of 1.2, then doubled, and then add half the sum of all her progeny's scores... The exact numbers I use can certainly be debated, but I found that with a power of 1.2 I place adequate weight on long lasting animals, and a 50/50 score split between her and her offspring is good, because sometimes you get a cow that didn't last long, but had great daughters... it's also the percent of her DNA, which makes it fairly logical. The 50/50 split makes it so she gets points for how well her great granddaughters do as well, but not that much. My best cows have a score 40-45, which over time I expect to top out at 50.
For charts, I have each original dams score, total progeny, total culls, total calves from the culled animals, total calves kept, and total in stock.
I made a chart of total calves sold per animal kept, but I found that since from 1 line of cows I had kept 7 animals in 4 years, the numbers were drastically off since those 7 animals have had a total of 4 calves to date, meanwhile in another line I hadn't kept a replacement heifer in 8 years (and probably never will again), so their avarage was much higher, which doesn't reflect what happens properly... So back to the drawing board, and I made "correction factor" which takes in the current average age of the animals.. In the end I think I got something that reasonably accurately represents what is going on.
For each line of cows I also have a 3D graph of how many calves I've had from each throught the years, which gives you a trend to see which ones do well and not.
This is what I do when I'm waiting for a cow to calf!
If anyone else does this, I'd gladly trade formulas.. I've had a misery trying to make Excel do what i want it to!
Mark Twain said... There's lies, D@mn lies, and statistics... numbers will never tell the whole story, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I collect the following info: Name, Tag, a unique ID number, DOB, sex, dam, sire, BW, and more recently weaning weight, cull year and cull ages of dams, twin, wether I consider the offspring as replacement material, and then if I have kept a heifer as a replacement, wether they are in stock or not, and the "original dam", and of course cull reasons.
From this I can gather total calves of each dam, total progeny of her and her daughters, average number of calves I've gotten from that line of cows by the time I culled them. I also get the average age of a cow's line that I have in stock, and I score them, as well as their progeny, then 'normalize' it so that the top score is 100. I also keep track of which generation they are. So far it's a good thing I have a widescreen monitor because I can still fit columns A through AH on it without scrolling.
Here's how I score the cow... I take the calves she's produced and raise it to the power of 1.2, then doubled, and then add half the sum of all her progeny's scores... The exact numbers I use can certainly be debated, but I found that with a power of 1.2 I place adequate weight on long lasting animals, and a 50/50 score split between her and her offspring is good, because sometimes you get a cow that didn't last long, but had great daughters... it's also the percent of her DNA, which makes it fairly logical. The 50/50 split makes it so she gets points for how well her great granddaughters do as well, but not that much. My best cows have a score 40-45, which over time I expect to top out at 50.
For charts, I have each original dams score, total progeny, total culls, total calves from the culled animals, total calves kept, and total in stock.
I made a chart of total calves sold per animal kept, but I found that since from 1 line of cows I had kept 7 animals in 4 years, the numbers were drastically off since those 7 animals have had a total of 4 calves to date, meanwhile in another line I hadn't kept a replacement heifer in 8 years (and probably never will again), so their avarage was much higher, which doesn't reflect what happens properly... So back to the drawing board, and I made "correction factor" which takes in the current average age of the animals.. In the end I think I got something that reasonably accurately represents what is going on.
For each line of cows I also have a 3D graph of how many calves I've had from each throught the years, which gives you a trend to see which ones do well and not.
This is what I do when I'm waiting for a cow to calf!
If anyone else does this, I'd gladly trade formulas.. I've had a misery trying to make Excel do what i want it to!
Mark Twain said... There's lies, D@mn lies, and statistics... numbers will never tell the whole story, but it's interesting nonetheless.
