Development and use of a graphical user interface showing claw health at herd level

Objectives

To monitor claw health and evaluate claw health management interventions at farm level, it is important to have valid and consistent recordings of claw trimming and tools that can provide an overview and details of the recordings. While digital recordings of claw trimming and claw lesions are already possible for Danish farmers, the objective for this project was to develop an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) to show a claw trimming profile and an interactive GUI to present claw lesions at farm level. Also, the use of the two GUIs will be addressed.

Material and methods

Initially a workshop, where farmers, claw trimmers, bovine veterinarians, cattle production advisors, and researchers attended, provided an outline of functions needed in a GUI. A draft version of the GUI was created using a software application (Microsoft Power Business Intelligence (Power BI), Microsoft ©). The draft version based on anonymized claw recordings extracted from the Danish cattle data base (DCDB) was tested by user groups consisting of farmers, bovine veterinarians, and cattle production advisors. Adjustments were made and the GUI was incorporated in the Dairy Management System (DMS), a digital management tool provided to the cattle farmer by SEGES. The claw health GUI was launched in two steps: a claw trimming profile in September 2020 and a claw health interface in September 2021. Trimming and lesions can be recorded using the common Nordic claw recording system, (Nordic Claw App, Anonymous, 2022), by a smart phone or by using DMS. All data are uploaded to DCDB. Descriptive statistics showing how many times the GUI has been used for the first four months after second launch was collected at February the 7^th, 2022, using a DMS statistic function. [...]