Putting the “Zing!” Back Into It

 

New MilkHand 4 Pocket PC Improves Testing Accuracy

 

For the veteran DHIA field technician, test day can become monotonous.  Identify the cow by her tag number.  Assign a sample number to the cow.  Record the cow’s milk weight and pen number.  Do that 1,000 times over a ten-hour period, twenty times a month, twelve months a year, times how many years in a career.  You get the picture.

 

Fortunately its not as bad as the previous paragraph makes it sound.  There are different kinds of barns.  In some barns you test with co-workers.  Some testers develop friendships with the people on the dairy.  Stick around long enough and you almost become part of the family.

 

But there is no way around the fact that the average full-time DHI field technician probably identifies, weighs, and samples over 10,000 cows a month.  Putting it another way, over an eight-year period, that field technician will come human eyeball to cow ear with over a million cows.

 

So when the California DHIA was looking for a field technician to work the bugs out of their new Pocket PC based MilkHand system, veteran Fresno DHIA tester Alfred Duran jumped at the chance to add a little variety to his daily routine. 

 

The California DHIA had purchased the rights to the original MilkHand test day data collection system back in 2000.  The original system includes a Corvallis Microtechnology MC-V handheld computer with the MilkHand software installed.  The original system had one function and performs that function very well.  But as producers increased the frequency of the times certain parts of the herd are milked, herd size increased, and additional demands were placed on the system, it seemed the theme of the day became how to develop a “workaround” to make this system do what was needed.

 

Early in 2004, the California DHIA board of directors concurred with the management recommendation to re-write the software.  After a search of a number of possible candidates, CDHIA entered into an agreement with Orange Enterprises.  Orange Enterprises is primarily known for their pest control advisor program, Tiger Jill.  However, one of their co-founders, Udi Sosnik, had extensive dairy experience co-opting with the late Bliss Crandall of DHI-Provo on projects, working with UC Davis’ Don Bath on dairy nutrition programs, and contracting with individual dairies for custom work.

 

Under the direction of Orange Enterprises, the Pocket PC platform was chosen.  After months of programming, the program was ready for a field trial.  At that time, California DHIA Assistant Manager Scott Taylor went out to a barn where the Fresno DHIA was testing, looking for a few technicians to pick up the unit and test its feasibility.  The first few candidates were reluctant to accept the challenge but Alfred Duran readily volunteered.

 

Duran noted that after a “ten minute crash course” he started testing cows with it.  Taylor went on to note that, “I think he basically asked me what to do after he got the cow numbers in.  I showed him where the enter key was and he was off and running.  Twenty minutes later he came up to me and said he made one little error and asked how to correct it?”

 

Although Duran had tested using a laptop computer for a number of years, he had never used the CMT based MilkHand system.  In fact, Duran had never used any kind of Palm or any kind of handheld unit other than a calculator before this.

 

This Pocket PC unit, a Dell Axim, is known in the industry as a PDA – a personal digital assistant.  The early units worked well as calculators, for addresses, phone numbers, and appointments but were limited after that to primarily look-up functions.  Records from both DairyComp 305 and DHI-Plus could be downloaded into the PDAs for easy look-up.  Data entry into the system was more of a challenge.

 

But the Pocket PC based units come loaded with the items mentioned above plus such features as Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.  The power of personal computer had finally arrived in a handheld.  Put the unit into a protective case and you have the right tool for the testing job.

 

Testing with the new MilkHand 4 Pocket PC has revolutionized testing for Alfred Duran.  He loads a control file from the farm PC or records processing center into the handheld and can tell cowside whether or not the number he has recorded is one from a cow in the herd.  Prior to this, he would enter the cow number into the computer after the milk weight was recorded.  If the cow number was not in the herd file on the laptop, that cow was long gone and double checking the number was not a possibility.

 

“My errors have gone down from maybe ten (in a herd of 1,000) on any given test to two or three because I can punch in a number and it will tell me right there,” notes Duran.  “Now we’ve used it on a 6,000 cow dairy (in two pits) and when we use it on the whole herd, our errors have gone down from fifty cows to maybe eight or ten per barn.”

 

In addition, he goes on to explain, “I can tell the dairyman that I know that a cow number in question is the number on the cow because I’ve looked at it twice.  The computer told me that she is not in the herd, but that is the number that is in her ear.  Dairymen like the idea of fewer mistakes and they like the idea of me being positive of the cow identification."

 

To date, Duran is only using the new device on parlor type barns, testing about 12,000 cows each month.   While Kings County DHIA field technician Joe Labendeira has adapted it for use in flat barns, Duran sees it as more of challenge for how the Fresno DHIA tests those barns.  He does think that the new MilkHand program would be an excellent tool in rotary barns. 

 

Using the new program has given Duran a new outlook on his job.  “It’s made the job a lot more interesting for me.  Getting to work with the CDHIA personnel on something that is going to be used, hopefully nationwide, brings me a lot of satisfaction.  As far as the job, learning to do new things and showing other testers how to use it has just been great.  It’s made my job easier.  I get spoiled by the thing.  I don’t like working without it.”

 

And the program seems to be catching on with the other Fresno DHIA testers as well.  Duran estimates that three fourths of the testers react positively to the new device and are quick to ask if they will get to use it on herds they do together.  He estimates that ninety percent of the dairymen he tests with the MilkHand 4 Pocket PC are very positive.

 

Reports out of Southern California indicate that the best Southern Counties DHIA testers can handle double 40 barns by themselves with the old MilkHand system.  The largest barn Duran, who has been using the system for about four months, has handled by himself with the new system has been a double 30 taking only milk weights.  “I could handle it by myself before but I would have no time to check myself.  The MilkHand system gives me time to make sure that I’m doing it right.  It has made me a better tester.”

 

According to Duran, the new MilkHand 4 Pocket PC has put the “Zing!” back into testing cows.  And even if the “Zing!” turns out to be rather short lived, the end product is still a device that is going to help the user become a better tester and provide better information and service to the dairy producer and the DHI record keeping industry.