Client
Paul Virkler < pdv3@cornell.edu>
Advisors
Becky L. Callan <blc65@cornell.edu>
Rick Watters <rdw32@cornell.edu>
Daryl Nydam <dvn25@cornell.edu>
Kim Potter <ksr525@cornell.edu>
François Elvinger <fe655@cornell.edu>
The client and the advisors are members of the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine.
Student contact
Zhili Huang, <zh324@cornell.edu>, is student contact for this project.
Who we are
Quality Milk Production Services (QMPS) is a program of the Animal Health Diagnostic Center (AHDC) in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine. As the largest organized program of its type in the world, QMPS extends an array of services to clients within New York State as well as to other states and other countries. The program is staffed by 35 team members, including veterinarians, laboratory and field technicians, couriers, and administrative staff. We operate out of four different sites in NYS: Ithaca (Central), Canton (Northern), Cobleskill (Eastern), and Warsaw (Western).
The mission of QMPS is to meet the needs of dairy producers, veterinarians, and the dairy industry through on-farm service, diagnostics, education, and research. We are a science-based organization using the most effective methods and technology to help producers improve dairy product quality and safety. Our work contributes to consumer confidence in the dairy industry. We aim to be recognized as a definitive source of information on milk quality and food safety, and we want to assist dairy producers to achieve greater profitability through higher milk quality and improved herd health.
New York State is the third highest dairy producer in the United States, behind California and Wisconsin, and the dairy industry is the largest contributor of revenue to New York State’s agricultural economy. There are approximately 4,600 dairy farms in New York State earning an average annual gross income of $545,131. There are more than 620,000 cows in the State of New York, producing more than 14.7 billion pounds of milk per year.
Project Goals
One of the most frequently used services of QMPS is the herd survey and milking time audit, whereby milking procedures, management, housing, equipment, and mastitis control are evaluated. This service is for herds using an ongoing mastitis control program where a complete picture is desired, or for herds experiencing problems with mastitis, which is an infection of the cow’s udder. Trained QMPS personnel arrive at the farm, and evaluate cow hygiene, udder health, housing, equipment, and herd management. Currently, all of the data is handwritten on separate forms while on the farm, then compiled and transcribed into an Access database back at the lab, which leads to report delays and transcription errors. Very importantly it also takes an enormous amount of time to create reports from the raw data in this manner.
QMPS needs a Herd Survey Field Application for on-farm use, which allows for streamlining the process from data collection to summary. The data would be collected while on the farm, directly entered into the application, and compiled into a report format for the client before QMPS staff leaves the farm, allowing for real-time result evaluation. The data would also be easily exported into a database for ease of report generation as well as database storage for research purposes. The application will need to be written in native script, allowing it to be run across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, etc.).
Project Summary
The project could be composed of three phases:
The first phase of the app would include the collection and summary of the following data: teat-end cleanliness, udder hygiene, short-term teat scores, long-term teat scores, milking unit alignment, hand strip yields, and claw vacuum. Values for data collection use the format of 1, 2, 3 or 4. There are scorecards with pictures available for the scoring events listed above and being able to view these scorecards from the app would be helpful when training and for consistency of data recording between observers. Being able to have multiple scorecards on the app screen at the same time would be useful. Ability to export data to Excel for further analysis is a must. We would like to be able to take pictures during the use of the app and include these pictures in the data summary.
The second phase of the app would incorporate the QMPS herd survey form, QMPS mastitis risk management form, milking routine/parlor efficiency, NMC vacuum and airflow guidelines and NMC wash system analysis into the app. This phase would also develop an interface with our Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to create an accession and upload cow identification numbers and client information.
The third phase of the app development would include the collection and summarization of environmental and facilities data.
We would be happy to take you on a farm visit, so you can see firsthand what this process looks like.