Pretty much every milking parlour manufacturer nowadays will have a software package that runs the parlour, records yields, etc. Over the last few years, parlour software has tended to expand it’s functionality, for example, managing the cow breeding calendar and storing medicine records. But very often there’s still a need to integrate with another dairy herd management program, which handles things like the Movement Book, BCMS records, Farm Assurance records and produces detailed management reports. This is functionality that the parlour software doesn’t usually provide for UK requirements.
But no-one wants to be entering the same data into two separate programs of course. This is where a robust data transfer link is needed to minimise this double data entry as much as possible.
So how is data transferred between a herd management program and parlour software?
The first requirement is for the parlour manufacturer to provide a software “interface” that enables the management program to send cow data in a format that the parlour software can recognise.
Ten years ago a data transfer protocol called the “Taurus Standard interface” was developed with the aim of providing a universal standard that all software could work with. However, more recently, cow software developers began to find limitations in the Taurus specification as data transfer needs became more complex.
As a result, many parlour manufacturers have now developed their own methods for transferring data to farm software packages. So the reality is that some parlour manufacturers have better data links than others in terms of the types of data that can be transferred and the ease with which it can be done. What the dairy farmer is looking for is a robust data link that will run automatically.
Today, there are a wide variety of farm software solutions for cow management, but with time always at a premium for farm staff, avoiding duplicate data entry is a prime concern. So when considering a new dairy management program, it shouldn’t be forgotten to ask the farm software supplier about their data linking capabilities for your particular parlour type.
The basic data items that can be transferred usually include cow breeding event dates, and daily/averaged milk yields for each cow. Some software packages will synchronise the list of cow brand numbers i.e. if cows enter or exit the BCMS Herd Register on the management program, then the list of freeze brands in the parlour is amended via the data link. Additionally, management programs that calculate in-parlour or out-of-parlour feed quantities usually send this data to the parlour on a daily basis.
If you have any questions about data links for your milking parlour, feel free to contact Orchid on 01536 443300 for a no-obligation chat. As well as being able to advise on data import/export for the latest parlour software, we also have a great deal of experience with older parlour systems. In the case of the latter, there’s a good chance we can give you some useful pointers to help you improve your dairy herd recording system.