Insights from the Cow Master 2024 Conference

At the beginning, we didn’t realize how much time the preparation would take. Not that we wouldn’t do it again — on the contrary. We recognized how much the latest practical knowledge is missing in the field. We want Cow Master 2026 to be more user-friendly in terms of organization.

Our Vision for the Future

We believe that what you accomplished over the two days — whether it was during the lectures or the workshops at the Pooslaví farm — was, in its own way, unique. At the same time, we recognize how much we piled on for you.

We realized that we partly missed the opportunity to discuss the topics more thoroughly. Part of this was due to the shyness that we still carry from the past. We want to address this by communicating with you in advance about the topics of the next conference, so you have the chance to prepare better and formulate questions about what interests you and what truly concerns you. We want you to feel confident asking questions, even if they are not directly related to the topic. Your questions will help us and others understand the issues in a broader context.

We see discussion as one of the areas we want to improve in the future, and we will work to help you overcome initial shyness. At the same time, we will allow everyone to ask questions in Czech, as we understand that it allows you to describe the issues in your herd more accurately. We know many of you can communicate in English without problems, so we would like to introduce what we are currently calling “round tables,” where it will be possible to discuss with the speakers and get to know them better.

Universities have the responsibility to ensure that our knowledge and research results are transferred into practice and reach users such as farmers, nutritionists, hoof trimmers, and others. Therefore, connecting people from practice with researchers from universities, like myself, is, I believe, very important and is part of our responsibility.

Christoph Mülling
Professor of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Leipzig

We want the conference not to be our exhibition, but to be primarily about you. In the course of our work, we realized that only you yourselves can make improvements, and we want to help you with that.

You might be wondering why we do all this. Just like you, we think about our work and wish to improve our field. We understand that educated farmers know what they want to achieve.

That’s why we are here, with our knowledge and research, seeing ourselves as a tool to help you achieve that. As a whole, it makes sense to us. Through education, you will better understand the issues and be able to make decisions more easily. We hope you will continue to follow us, and we are excited that together we have started a new journey toward doing your work even better.

What’s Coming Up Before the End of the Year

By the end of the year, our goal is to redesign the Cow Master web environment. We are preparing an education section that will build on the knowledge from the conference and help you better navigate not only hoof diseases. For October, we are planning a workshop and would be delighted if you participate. For those unable to attend, we will provide the outcomes online.

More information about the planned workshop will be shared at the end of the week.