How Cownetics works
Cownetics helps you decide which animals breed your next replacements, and which of your bulls go on them. It starts with selection: rank the whole herd and show it to you, then put your dairy straws on the best and send the rest to beef.
What it's trying to do
Most breeding tools match a bull to every cow. Cownetics asks a question first: which cows should breed the next generation at all? The biggest gain in a herd comes from breeding replacements from your best animals, not just from picking good bulls. So Cownetics ranks every cow and heifer, puts your bull team on the top of the herd, and shows you what that should do for next year's heifers.
It works from your own ICBF files. There's nothing to retype, and no advisor or ICBF login is needed.
Your herd, your figures. The ranking isn't anyone's opinion. Every animal is ranked on the facts and figures in your own records, against animals at the same stage in your own herd: heifers with heifers, first lactation with first lactation, and so on. So it shows you the cows that do best in the system you actually run.
Every animal ranked
Each cow and heifer gets one score, built from her whole record rather than a single figure. The ranking looks at:
- Production
- Milk solids (fat and protein kg) from her latest lactation, compared with the best half of your own herd in the same lactation: first-calvers against your first-calvers, and so on. A heifer has no record yet, so she starts level and her dam's yield, against cows of the dam's age in your herd, moves her up or down.
- Fertility
- Her fertility sub-index, calving interval and how many serves she needed.
- Milk value
- Her milk sub-index, and her fat and protein kg and percentages.
- EBI
- Her Economic Breeding Index from ICBF.
- Health
- Her health sub-index, her SCC tests over the last one to two years, and mastitis and lameness cases. A heifer's SCC is judged on her dam.
- Family
- A small lift when her dam milks above the average of cows her age in your herd and is still in the herd, and a smaller dip when the dam is below it. It counts most for heifers, less each lactation, and not at all from the fourth lactation on, so good families keep being bred from.
Each part counts for some of the score; no single figure decides it.
Some animals are left out of the ranking: calves too young to breed, cows scanned empty, and cows you choose to cull. Cownetics proposes a cull list (cows with no serves or scanned empty) and you untick any you want to keep. Cows with high SCC, mastitis or lameness this year are flagged, with their place in the herd, so you can choose to keep them out of dairy breeding.
You pick your breeding emphasis — more weight on EBI and fertility, more weight on yield, or the balance in between — and then you see the ranking: a summary of your herd in bands, then every animal from first to last with her EBI, sub-indexes, latest yield, fat and protein, her dam's and grand dam's yields, and any health issues. You can save it as a PDF. Once you're happy with it, you move on to your breeding goals and your bull team.
Dairy or beef
You choose the share of the herd to breed dairy replacements from (half, by default; with 100 cows and 50%, the top 50 get dairy bulls). The top of the ranking gets your dairy straws; the rest go to beef. Cows you mark beef only keep their place in the ranking but get a beef bull. Cownetics also checks your straws against the replacements you need, using the conception rates you set (your herd's rates from last season are shown as a guide).
Bulls matched to cows
For each animal in the share you breed for dairy, Cownetics scores every bull on your team against her, looking at the bull's:
- Health
- Health sub-index, and SCC and lameness figures.
- Milk
- Milk sub-index, and fat and protein.
- Fertility
- Fertility sub-index, calving interval and survival.
- Calving
- Calving difficulty: heifer figures for heifers and first-lactation cows, cow figures for the rest.
- Cow size
- His daughters' expected liveweight.
Two rules are never broken:
- Inbreeding: no bull goes on a cow when their inbreeding is at or over your limit (6.25% as standard, from your ICBF inbreeding report).
- Calving difficulty: no bull with a high heifer calving difficulty goes on a heifer or a first-lactation cow.
Each cow gets up to three bulls in order: if the first runs out of straws, use the next. Sexed straws go to the top-ranked heifers with good fertility and cows that held to their first serve, at most two sexed bulls each; other animals, and every cow from her fifth lactation on, get conventional only. You get the plan on screen, as a download, and as a breeding chart to print for the AI man.
Where the figures come from
Your cows' figures come from the ICBF files you upload: the sale catalogue, the Fertility Profile and the inbreeding report, plus the SCC and health records if you have them. Bull figures come from the ICBF Active Bull List and the AI companies' current catalogues, which Cownetics keeps up to date. A bull in neither has probably been withdrawn, and the plan tells you.
Your files are only used for your own plan. Names and addresses in them are ignored, and uploaded files are deleted after 30 days.
What it isn't
Cownetics is a tool to plan with, not a replacement for your judgement. You know your cows: check the plan, especially the matches on heifers, and change anything that doesn't suit your farm. It's a test version, and feedback is welcome.