Cows and all cattle have basic needs and are creatures of habit, so when working with them, the key is to even out the environment and management. The more boring it is for us, the better it is for our animals. Do you have a standard operating procedure (SOP) for routine work on your farm? It would be necessary, according to a study published by DairyGlobal.

Only for large dairy farms?

Same environment, same food, same management, same routine - every day, all day. This will provide the stability and systematic approach that the animals are most comfortable with and reward it with more growth or more milk.

I have had the privilege of visiting thousands of dairy farms around the globe and witnessed how different management systems really work, and my experience has shown me without a shadow of a doubt that whenever farmers approach the tasks of dairy farm in a systematic way, things get better, productivity increases and profitability usually follows.

But why isn't it more common to see written SOPs, even though we know they work and improve farm operations? I think the reason is that most farmers know by heart what and how to work with their animals, so when they read or hear about SOPs they might think that the system wouldn't work on their farm because they already have a routine standard - just not written.

There is no room for error on the farm

Trust me, I get it – it sounds weird to write a routine you know by heart and then decorate it with photos. But, I can assure you that this works. Have you ever thought about professional pilots – they always use standardized forms. I can assure you that they know quite well how to take off, fly and land a plane and they do it almost every day, just like the dairy farmers who work on their farm.

But even with the vast experience of the pilots, they always use the SOPs to walk them through the steps. Why you might ask? To make sure there is no room for error. This is exactly what we should be doing for our cows. The more uniform we can make our work, the better for our animals.

I think the main problem is that many farmers think POS systems are more for "bigger farms" and I can understand why. For larger farms it would be almost foolhardy not to have a standardized approach to daily work. But, we know this is also true for smaller farms.

Where to start with SOPs?

When it comes to achieving SOP, dairy farmers often ask me how we do it. Well, I always suggest we start by focusing on the most vulnerable animals on the farm and do the SOP first. Then we move on to the most important other tasks on the farm and slowly we can cover all the routine work of the farm.

I think the best SOPs are with photos and text, but I think this varies from farmer to farmer. The main thing is to make sure that it describes the routine in a way that anyone – even someone like me who is familiar with farming but not the relevant farm – could practically step in and follow the routine and complete the task . This is a good SOP!

Only 5 SOPs

If I could only do 5 SOPs – for me, of course, these are far too few, but let's imagine that it is somehow limited – then the essentials would be:

1-For the birthing routine around small calves. Colostrum, navel disinfection, recording, weighing, clean environment, etc.

2-How to feed young calves, how to introduce concentrate, how to wean, weigh or measure at weaning, etc.

3-What is the routine in which a calf gets sick? Treatment, isolation, how to disinfect the environment where the sick calf was, etc.

4-Milking routine. How we treat cows at milking, identify slow milkers or cows that are content to let milk, how we clean the teats and teat ends, how long the stimulation time is, how we treat the teats after milking, etc.

5-This is a complicated one, because it is the last one in this example, but here I have to choose how we treat mammita in cows, how to take samples, how to administer the drugs, how to identify the cows that are on treatment, etc.

Above I could only choose 5 SOPs so I had to limit myself but that was just for this demo.