October 28-30, 2020 • Treasure Island Hotel • Las Vegas, NV
Registration Coming Soon
What is the conference?
Conference Accommodations
Treasure Island Hotel & Casino
Hotel Rooms $95
For your convenience, our meeting venue is also the place where you can reserve a room to stay for the extent of the conference. We have worked out a special price with Treasure Island for conference attendees, so rooms need to be reserved separately from the conference registration.
Reserve your room as soon as they are available because room rates are available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The hotel rooms contain two queens or a king with approximately 400 sq. feet. Rooms offer pillow-topped mattresses, wireless internet, and a small refrigerator. In addition to the room rate, there is a daily resort fee of $32.
Featured Speakers
Robb Bender, PhD, PAS
World Class Feed Management Goals
Robb Bender is a consultant and partner in GPS Dairy Consulting LLC. Robb provides independent nutrition and whole-farm management consulting to dairies in Wisconsin and Michigan.
Robb will cover the World Class Feed Management Goals identified by the GPS Dairy Consultation group through their experience in feed management and dairy production performance. Through these goals, the participant will be able to rank their own feed management practices and determine areas that need to be improved.
Gerald Poppy, DVM, MBA, PhD
Using Data to Make Decisions
Gerald Poppy works for Diamond V leading the development and implementation of strategic marketing plans to drive growth.
Dr. Poppy will speak to us drawing upon the last 37 years working on special projects to improve profitability on dairies. His emphasis is on how to understand data and the underlying uncertainty in information and how knowing this can help us make better, more profitable decisions.
Jennifer Schutz, PhD
Optimizing Animal Health
Jennifer grew up on a research feedlot and has been working in industry since 2012. She received her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in Ruminant Nutrition focusing on immunology and vaccine efficacy, carcass quality and beef nutrition value, and feedlot management practices. Jennifer joined Chr. Hansen in 2017 as their Technical Services Manager.
Dr. Schutz will be discussing “optimizing health” in the animal. Her talk will focus on the role probiotics play in keeping the gastrointestinal tract healthy and the importance of the immune system for keeping an animal healthy and productive.
Conference Agenda
Wednesday, October 28th
1:00 - 2:00 p.m.
Software updates for Consultants and others who bring laptop computers
1:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Registration and individual one-on-one consultations by appointment
Thursday, October 29th
7:00 - 8:00 a.m.
Breakfast/Registration
8:00 - 9:50 a.m.
General Session
9:50 a.m. - 10:15 a.m.
Break
10:15 a.m. - 10:55 a.m.
General Session (continued)
10:55 - 12:00 p.m.
Breakout Classes: Block 1
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
1:00 - 2:45 p.m.
Breakout Classes: Block 2
2:45 - 3:15 p.m.
Break
3:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Breakout Classes: Block 3
Friday, October 30th
7:00 - 8:00 a.m.
Breakfast
8:00 - 9:45 a.m.
Breakout Classes: Block 4
9:45 - 10:15 a.m.
Break
10:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
General Session: A Case Study - Using tools beyond the basics to dig into the performance of your dairy and identify opportunities.
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Lunch
1:00 p.m.
End Conference
Breakout Class Descriptions
- Breakout 1: Introduction to DHI-Plus
- DHI-Plus settings
- Pocket DHI-Plus and mobile
- Breakout 2: Tools
- Custom reports
- Rx-Plus and Rx tools
- Breakout 3: Reproduction
- Combined with the data analysis class for a deeper discussion on analytics
- Preg Rates, Semen on hand, Breeding, and Abortion
- Genomics
- Breakout 4: Data Entry
- Data entry tips
- Recording data fro Heifers
- Breakout 1: Rations, Ingredients, and Loads
- Adding ingredients and rations
- Setting-up loads to deliver feed efficiently
- Evaluating what was actually fed
- Breakout 2: Commodities Coming In and Milk Going Out - Tracking Every Pound
- Setting up deliveries in EZweights
- Bulk tank imports
- Income over feed costs
- Weather imports
- Breakout 3: Managing Inventories
- Complete inventories
- Benefits of the EZfeed mobile app to do inventories
- Keeping inventories clean
- Scaling into EZfeed
- Breakout 4: Harvest Loads
- Setting up the harvest
- Auto-filling information
- Add new commodities
- Ticket printing
- Breakout 1: How Are Your Loads Really Going?
- Pauses, small ingredient handling, and tolerances - how they can hurt or help
- Understanding gross change details
- Using pen and ingredient history
- Cleaning up unwanted data
- Breakout 2: Winning With Your Feed Team
- Successful team meetings
- Using the quick summary page
- Scheduling tasks
- Creating the right report for each team member
- Breakout 3: Managing Bunks - Do You Like Slick Bunks?
- Pen count accuracy
- Managing refusal and feed changes
- Benefits to the EZfeed mobile app to do bunk calls and inventories
- Breakout 4: Ideas To Improve Efficiency By Reviewing Feed Center Designs
- Feeding efficiency, shrink, and unnecessary fuel usage
- What design do I want?
- How can I control shrink better?
- Are you losing commodities because of your feed center design?
- An interactive and discussion-based class focusing on analysis tools in EZfeed and DHI-Plus and how to help your dairy producers be more profitable.
- Learn new concepts and training for Cohort Analysis, Breeding Analysis, and Rx-Tools.
- Concepts and training on Feed intakes, Feed cost per CWT, IOFC, Feed Efficiencies, Feed Inventories, Managing Shrink, and Bunk Management.
- An interactive and discussion-based class focusing on the constants and changes in the industry.
- Review procedures in DHI-Provo software packages to enhance services provided by DHIA.
- Keep up to date on DHI-Plus/DHI-Plus Mobile/EZfeed/EZweights features used by dairy producers and consultants.
Sponsors
We would like to thank the sponsors of last year's Herd Management Conference. Their contributions are greatly appreciated because they help offset conference expenses and allow us to keep registration fees reasonable for attendees.
Last Year's Sponsors
Conference Registration
This year's conference attendees will be receiving jackets. During the registration process, you will be asked for your jacket size. For your reference, here are the sizing guides:
