Solving Problems Using Farm Data

Abstract

Attended by more than 50 practising veterinarians from the UK, this interactive workshop was designed to furnish participants with a few rarely-understood but fundamental tools that are invaluable when solving farm problems. Rather than teaching targets and rules of thumb, which by definition only help in specific cases, this session aimed to provide some of the fundamentals which allow any problem to be tackled. After an interactive illustration of the effects of lag, momentum, variation & bias, and how to choose the most appropriate metric in every case, there was a discussion of some common sources of bias in farm data which often mislead even very experienced analysts. As part of a breakout session participants were given concise problems to discuss with the group, which were based on common real-world scenarios that are more complex than they may initially appear. Some of these would challenge even the most experienced Dairy Veterinarians.