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Hi, my name is Joep Driessen from the Cowsignals Training Company. I like you to ask the "why" question. You see this cow. Very interesting signal. It's a world-famous cow from our [Norwegian] trainer. A Cowsignals trainer. He found it on a farm. You see the signal? I like you to ask yourself the "why" question. This is your farm. What are you going to do? Where do you start? Well, the answer is simple. It starts with very good observing. Looking, listening, feeling, sensing, and then thinking. And the whole concept is very simple. It's about look, think, and then act, do something.

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So, if you're a farmer, or an advisor, it's the same thing. Farmers standing here and looking at the cows. And you're an advisor, so you come and stand next to them. And you are going to look at that, at the cows together, standing next to your farmer. So, if you're a farmer, ask your advisor to do this together. And ask yourself the "why" question. What is happening on this picture? What do you see? If you ask yourself "why", you get wiser. You'll learn from the small things in life. And ask yourself the question all the time. This is how kids learn. My kids ask me all the time. "Why, daddy, why?" And it's really, really nice, because that's how you develop yourself. So, first question is, what's the first question? What do you see in this picture?

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So, write down three things. So, take a break for a half a minute. Write down the three things that you have been seeing in this picture. You've been watching this picture already for two minutes, right? So, what is happening here? If you were this manager, what three things you should do to have a thousand liters more milk in the end of the year? So, that's what we see. We can improve farms very quickly. And they can go rapidly from 8,000 to 9,000, or from 9,000 to 10,000 liters milk. And that makes a big difference. And the good thing is in the mean time the cows even live longer on these farms.

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So, how can we make cows live longer so that you have a better income, and that you have more working pleasure? So, what are the main three things in this picture that you see first of all? So, I asked this question to many farmers in the world already, but most of them say, "Hey, a lot of standing cows." Very good. Standing and waiting cows is bad news. A waiting cow is actually your best management advisor. A waiting cow is telling you that something is wrong because they don't like to wait. Cows don't have time to wait. If you see a standing cow, something is wrong. Cows like to rest and they like to eat.

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So, why are all these cows standing? That's a good question. Next question is: why are they not eating? Or resting? And if you look carefully at this picture, the most, the biggest improvement point is very, very simple and very cheap, and it can be solved just like that. You know what that is? You see the feeding table on the right? The first six, seven places, there's no food in front of the cows. And this is one of the biggest things I see all around the world. A lack of feed intake in cows, because they just don't push the feed on the right spots or they don't use the whole length of the feeding table. And that is big money.

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So use every centimeter of feeding table 24 hours per day. That is number one advice. Secondly, you see that this is a three row barn, right? One, two, three rows. And how are these cows in the back going to eat and to drink? So, you look at feed and water as the first two things. There's not enough feed space available for optimum performance. And there's only two drinkers. You can't see; there's one in this and this corridor. So, only two very narrow corridors. And two thirds of the cows are trapped in this back alley, okay? So, they have to come out through these narrow alleys to eat and to drink.

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So, what happens? 30% of your cows are getting sick just because they don't eat enough and drink enough. So, what's the solution? Solution is always very simple. You just cut out six beds in the middle part of this barn, in the middle block, take out six beds and you suddenly have a lot more milk, because the cows can move around. In the meantime, you have to add a water drinker there so that they have more chance to drink. So, with one extra cross-over, you pay more respect to herd behavior and flight behavior. Cows like to be doing things with the herd, and they like to flee. And these things are very, very important.

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A lot more things you can do. You can kick down the wall for better head space, and many, many more things, I come back to that in my next videos. This is about how we confirm, how we change a barn, and how we can make a thousand liters more milk out of our existing system. And that's always small things. Use the feed fence completely. Make an extra cross-over and an extra water drinker. And these are very simple, cheap tips that make a huge difference for you and for your dairy cows. So, please sign in for our video program.

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This was all we can give you to make you triggered. But we'd like you to sign in to learn more. Do it together with your farm manager, together with your worker, your milker, together with your advisor. Just sign in and look at our paid videos. They're really good. And we'd like to help you to do better farm management to just become a better farmer and to become a better advisor. And it'll give you a lot more working pleasure in the future.

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Thank you for your trust in Cowsignals. We look forward to seeing you. My name is Joep Driessen. Cowsignals Training Company, Holland.