Herd Management Science
Modern farms are complex agricultural systems where scarce resources such as land, animals, labor, buildings, capital, and energy are transformed into products demanded by society such as milk, meat, and environmental stewardship. Herd Management Science can be defined as the discipline serving the purpose of concurrently ensuring that the resources are combined in such a way that the welfare of the individual farmer is maximized subject to the constraints imposed on the farm’s production.
Much of the Herd Management Science research is driven by questions from or in the animal agriculture industry. We work on valuation of alternatives and optimal decisions on farms in a systems context, often through software development and modeling, in areas such as seasonality of production, culling rules, use of genomic testing, reproduction programs, stocking density and precision technologies. For many of the questions, we build comprehensive computer programs that are less likely to miss the less obvious costs and benefits associated with a management policy. Techniques used are dynamic programming, Markov chain simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, genetic algorithms, network optimization, mixed linear models, and survival analysis. The computer programs can evaluate the financial implications of the direct and indirect effects of various management options, while computer modeling is a cheap alternative to designed experiments when the objective is resource-allocation, and the production function is known. The Herd Management Science programs aim to optimize animal production systems by increasing efficiency, profitability, and sustainability of animal agriculture.
Herd Management Faculty:
Dr. Albert De Vries
Dr. Emily K. Miller-Cushon
Dr. Corwin D. Nelson
Dr. José Eduardo P. Santos
Dr. Carissa Wickens