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Hi, my name is Joep Driessen, from the Cowsignals Training Company. Thank you for coming back to Cowsignals. Here we've got a cow which is showing you ten signals. So, what can we see, and what can we do about it? Cowsignals is about preventing disease and tunnel vision, and we see that most farmers don't see all the signals. They are just too busy with their own job, and they don't see the signals. So let's do a little test. What do you see in this cow? What is the first signal that jumps into your eyes? Maybe it's good that you put your video on pause for a moment, and write down the three major signals on this cow, because there are three major signals, and there are seven minor signals, but they all tell you a story. It's all about the secrets of dairy farming, and if you understand it, you can also prevent it. Well, let's start.

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You didn't put on pause, did you? Okay, you're very curious. You want to know. Okay, let's have a look. The first thing you see is probably this danger triangle, right? On the left side of the cow, behind the last rib, you see that the skin goes inside, and you see a little shadow on the side of the cow, and that means that this cow didn't eat for the last six hours. That is bad news, because cows like to eat every two hours, and if they don't eat for six hours, they get hungry, and they get sick, and this is the case with at least 30% of all the dairy cows in the world today. So how does it come that 30% of the cows didn't eat? So let's look a bit further. You see the danger triangle. You see the hunger groove on the left-hand side. She didn't eat. What else do you see, if you look carefully at this cow?

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What else is she trying to tell you? Alright. You see the wound on the hock, the hock lesion? That's the joint of the cow. She has a hock wound. How do they get hock wounds? Interesting question. Now, you see a lesion on the upper knee. Okay, and now you see a lesion on the back, maybe. Did you see a lesion on the backbone? On the top of the backbone is a real pussy irritation on this cow. It's here, on the backbone. You see? It's a hard bone. It's by hitting the metal. It's hitting something. But now the main question comes, why is it hitting something?

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So number one signal: empty rumen. Number two: wounds on the legs and on the backbone. And now I want to know what is the reason? Do you know the reason? Then we come to number three signal, and that's probably the most important signal. If you look carefully at this cow you can see that she's lame. Did you see that? Be honest with yourself. Did you see it? I do this with a lot of farmer groups, and if you saw it, you're a good farmer. If you didn't see it, you're still a good farmer, but you didn't know what to look for, and that's what I want to help you with. So you see that the back left here is a little bit lifted. You see?

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So she's not standing the full weight on four feet. And that is the main reason that this cow is having wounds and that she didn't eat. So these are the three main signals: rumen fill (the triangle), then you look at the wounds on the body, and then you look at what can be the reason. And the reason is lameness. Still there's the big question, how did she get lame? What are all these factors that caused this lameness? These are the three main factors on this cow. Another thing we have to look at, another seven signals, I promised you, on this cow. Well, what can it be? Look a bit further.

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Okay. The head is hanging. The ears are hanging. So one farmer was telling me, "This cow has heavy ear marks." But it's just that she is sad and depressed. And you can also look into the eyes, and the eyes are deep in the head, you see? So when the eyes are deep in the head it means that there's too little drinking there's too little fluid in the fat behind the eye, and then you get eyeballs that go deeper in the skull. You can see it on this cow. She's not really clear in the eyes, not nice and hiny, bulbous eyes. And then we can look at the skin, the color of the skin. It's a bit dull, and dusty, and the nose is not very shiny. And look at the hair on this cow. So this cow is telling us a big story.

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Last signal, number ten, is the tail signal. What does that mean? You can see that this cow is scared and afraid because she has pain, she can't move, and she's a bit stressed. How can you see stress on a cow? Well, you can see the behavior of the cow, and you can see, sometimes, the white of the eye. You cannot see it on this cow, but what you can see is she's putting tension on the tail. The tail is pulled to her body. It's like if you kick a dog, don't try that at home, but if you kick a dog, she's running away with the tail between her legs. So this is just a little introduction about observing cows, learning how to see everything and understand everything. And this was only the seeing part.

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The next step is how do you understand everything to have a better income and more working pleasure. How can we let cows live twice as long? What should we do, as a farmer, and then as an advisor. What can we do to improve the dairy industry a lot? And it's easy. I'm doing it every day, so I hope you tune in for the next video, or sign in for a video program, because we have some excellent information for you that you can use every day, as a farmer and as an advisor.

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Thank you for joining, and thank you for your interest in Cowsignals. Hope to see you soon, in the next video. Thanks a lot.