C&M Dairy is a third-generation dairy operation that in 1979 had 70 cows to having 1,200 young and adult animals today. Allen Chester and his daughter, Brit Laforce, are two key owners and managers of C&M and began using nTELL in early 2024 to understand how the platform could help drive their business decision making to maximize profitability. Brit says “I use each of the Key Performance Areas on a regular basis.” Brit has also involved other employees and advisors in collaborating with her in looking at the data that nTELL aggregates to help understand key opportunities for the business.
Using nTELL, Brit frees up an average of 30 minutes each day that allows her to spend more time with her employees. Brit explains, "nTELL makes it easy to see data at a quick glance from several different farm management programs. I have shifted the time I save to coaching and mentoring employees". Brit says, “Having time to work with employees helps ensure I can support them to do their work efficiently and get people home earlier in their day. With labor being a key expense at any operation, nTELL supports creating labor efficiencies and reducing associated costs.”
"nTELL makes it easy to see data at a quick glance from several different farm management programs."
Brit LaForce and her dad, Allen Chester needed to make decisions on which animals to keep or cull from their herd. The farm had raised too many replacements and needed to decide which animals should stay and which should leave to right size the operation. First, DNB's and low genomic cows were identified and culled to make room in the lactating herd for springing heifers.Next, they looked at the heifer to cow ratio and decided what that should be going forward. They again used genetic evaluations to identify lower value heifers and tailored the young stockbreeding program so lower value animals would get pregnant quickly and could be sold on the market for replacements carrying a high value beef/dairy cross calves. This action will right-size the number of replacements they raise in the future and maximize the value of the animals they choose to sell, all while advancing the genetics in their own herd.
nTELL helped uncover data entries that were inaccurate and impacting herd health and management decisions for C&M Dairy managers.Brit states, “I started to see that health events such as DAs, Ketosis and RPs seemed “off” for our herd based on the Key Performance Areas (KPAs)that nTELL was displaying by aggregating the data.” Brit identified the reason was tied to how data was being entered into the herd management system. Brit continues “I was able to coach my employee on how to enter health events with greater accuracy. Once I explained the “why” it was important to enter in data accurately we began to see data we could use to make decisions that impacts production and herd health.