Dr. Jodie A. Pennington, Extension Dairy Specialist Introduction Proper management is the key to success in any enterprise, and the dairy business is no exception. Each successful producer must have records which are accurate and reliable to make sound management decisions. Methods by which records are maintained vary with farms and the individuals who keep them.
Good systems vary.
Some include computers while others include card files, tags, color coding and wheels. Computers are more prevalent on farms with more than 150 cows because they allow information to be summarized more easily than doing the summary by hand. But card files or similar systems can allow for relatively efficient summaries compared to a single notebook of all information in a chronological order. Incomplete or incorrect records can be misleading and result in less than optimal decisions. Dairy producers benefit from production and cost information on cows in their herd as well as from efficiency and management data.