Herd Management

Herd Information

Calf Feed Management and Milk Composition

Diet Information

Lactating Cows

Dry Cows

Heifers

Nutritional Strategy for Enteric Methane Mitigation

Herd Dashboard


Number of Animals by Category

Herd Stability

Milk Yield

Dry Matter Intake

Other

Manure Excretion

Methane Emissions

Nitrogen

Phosphorous

Potassium

Manure Handling and Management

Manure and GHG Emissions Dashboard


Barn

Manure Storage

Barn

Storage

Temperature (C) and precipitation (mm).

Purchased Feeds


Homegrown crops

Crop emissions

Manure applied

Diet Costs and Milk Price

Fuel Consumption

Carbon Footprint and Main GHG Sources

Carbon dioxide eq. by kg of Milk

Carbon dioxide eq./kgMilk by source of GHG

Carbon dioxide eq. by farm sources

Carbon dioxide eq. by type of GHG

Nutrient Balances

Nitrogen


Phosphorous


Potassium


Economic Analysis (per day)

DairyPrint model: Paving pathways for dairy farmers towards higher sustainability.

Quantifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (i.e., methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide) from all significant sources in dairy farms is difficult and prohibitively expensive. The same applies to nutrient balance and management. Therefore, farmers must rely on mathematical models to achieve this. Available models are cumbersome and overwhelming to use. Thus, our objective is to develop the DairyPrint Model: a simple, minimalistic, user-friendly, and scientifically sound whole-farm decision support model to assess environmental tradeoffs of dairy farming. The DairyPrint Model is composed of herd, manure, crop, and economic modules. In the herd module, based on inputs such as total number of cows, calving interval, and culling rate the model runs the simulations performing herd dynamics in monthly steps, outputting annual herd demographics. Moreover, milk yield curves and milk composition, body weight, dry matter intake, and feed efficiency are estimated. These variables, in turn, are used to estimate the total excreted manure, urine, feces, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in addition to enteric methane emissions. From the herd module, there is a distribution of the produced outputs into other modules, in addition to the specific user inputs for each module. The barn module receives all the manure produced and from it, along with information from weather data and type of facility (freestall or tie-stall), methane, ammonia, and nitrous oxide emissions are estimated. Once the manure in the barn is transferred to the manure module, the manure is handled and processed according to the practices adopted by the farm. After manure processing, the processed material is distributed to the crop fields in the crop module. In the crop module, all GHG emissions are accounted for due to the application of manure, fertilizers, and limestone. Additionally, nutrient balances are estimated. Therefore, the DairyPrint Model is capable of helping farmers move toward higher sustainability, providing a user-friendly and intuitive graphical user interface allowing the user to respond to 'what-if' questions.


For more information, check these out: