Improving Data Management for Cow and Calf Researchers

Abstract

The aim of this thesis titled Improving Data Management for Cow and Calf Researchers is to develop an online database for the researchers in order to store detailed information on cattle under their supervision. Live Barn has successfully been able to maintain records for the past year, but since many of the old software available were condensely packed with all the form data, we decided to develop the application further, with the aim of simplifying the software for technology's suitability for further development. This thesis first examines the old software currently available in the market and compares the pros and cons of different software available. In the second stage, several adaptations from the previous software are undertaken. Finally the technology is applied to the development of new web-based application to maintain all the records for United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), with a year long testing phase. At the end of the testing application for each week, the researchers were asked to give some feedback according to which the application was fine-tuned. The results of the fine tuning show that Live Barn is well suited for the experiments that the researchers undertake in the facility by giving optimized data storage and faster data retrieval times. USDA expressed interest to commercialize the application. We recommend further modification to the applications for more analytical data to be displayed to the researchers to make it more visually striking in-order to make better decisions and results clearly visible.