Comparing cows to each other is always challenging, as there are many factors to take into account. The cow index is designed to help with this. You can find the cow index on the cowcard in the cow rank widget on the overview page. For an overview of all the cows on the reproduction prediction widget on the dashboard, click here on ‘Go to herd overview’ and then select the Cow index tab. This page shows the cow index for all the cows and lets you apply sorting to find the cows that you are looking for.

100

The average cow index score is 100; cows that are better than the average cows will score higher than 100 and underperforming cows will score below 100. The greater the difference to 100, the better or worse that the cow is.

The cow index is a combination of four 4 indices:

1) production

2) health

3) reproduction and

4) robot efficiency.

As the cow index is calculated based on a number of other indices, it gives more insight than when focusing purely on milk production. It also provides the opportunity to drill down further into these indices. As a result, the cow index is used as the basis for many cow-related decisions on the farm such as breeding and keeping decisions.

What are these indices based on?

The indices are updated whenever new parameters are found to make the index more accurate. What the indices are currently based on can be found below:

Production

Expected future milk production

Health

Curative health treatment

Sick chance

Somatic cell count

Reproduction

Inseminations

Robot efficiency

Milk yield per boxtime

Robot visiting behaviour