A better way to classify?

On December 18, we classified the Hoard Farm Guernsey herd. It was a cold, blustery day outside and equally chilly in the free stall barn. The thermostat for the curtains read 13 degrees when we started at 8 a.m. and peaked at 21 about 4 p.m. We currently have 328 cows on test with about 271 in milk.

We began scoring in the 2-year-old pen. The classifier and Hoard's editor assisting with classifying moved through that pen quickly, thanks in part to 54 first-calf heifers that were classified two months earlier as part of an effort to get a group of young sire daughters in the January USDA sire summaries. Since 90 days hadn't passed, none of those cows were eligible to be rescored. Next, we moved to the fresh cow pen where most cows weren't quite in condition for classification day. Then we went to the high group where 90 percent of the cows needed to be rescored. It was quite fruitful; many cows were looking good and had about 10 hours of milk in them at the time we scored the group. By the time we were done in that pen it was 1:30, and we took a break for lunch. We were on a brisk pace thanks to the diligent work of our appraiser.

After a 30-minute break, we moved to our second-lactation-and-older group . . . by far the largest pen on the farm. We scored for about an hour, cherry picking our best cows an hour before milking. Then it was decision time. We had a pending snowstorm — should we try to finish classifying or use the time we set aside Friday to finish. That storm eventually dumped 12 inches the next day which made our decision to finish classifying the right one, in our mind. So, we scored older cows in the holding pen, then set up the electronic sort gates to capture the unscored cows. We did get all the cows scored, but we created quite a bottleneck. We had cows backed up the return lane at one point and put the overflow in the thankfully empty sick pens. We greatly disrupted the routine of our cows, and it showed up in dry matter intakes and milk production the ensuing days.

That begs the question . . . is there a better way to sort and classify cows in a free stall barn. The Hoard Farm does not have headlocks, but we do have electronic ID. As our farm team discussed this issue, one solution was a more frequent classification schedule for the entire herd. At the present, our breed association has a 10-month rotation. This is the second time we classified the entire herd, and we are still in search of a better system. What are your thoughts?