Sometime in the next two weeks, Cassia County Compliance Officer Melissa Price will take a training course to improve her cow-counting skills.

Marv Patten, chief of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Dairying, will present the training, which is designed to help the county keep better track of the number of animals maintained in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The ability to reliably measure the number of animals maintained in the county's CAFOs has long been an obstacle to enforcing compliance with the terms of CAFO permits. While counting cows may seem like a simple task, when it comes to counting tens of thousands of them, the job gets a bit trickier. For one thing, cows don't typically stand still long enough to make sure they're being counted once, and not two or three times.

Patten said the main idea is to measure the facilities where cows are fed. Most CAFOs in Cassia County are cattle operations.

In dairy operations, he said, cows are fed at "lockups" - narrow metal gates through which cows place their heads to feed at a trough. Patten said nearly all dairy operations make use of lockups.

"I can't even think of one that does not have one," he said.

Dairy heifers are ushered to the lockups after being milked. While standing at the lockups, heifers' heads are fixed in place so a variety of treatments, such as medicine and artificial insemination, can be administered. After that, the heifers are shown to their corrals to rest.

Counting the number of lockup posts at a dairy operation is a reliable indicator of how many cows are maintained there, Patten said, because no dairy farmer would want to rush the milking cycle by using a single post for more than one cow per day. Keeping heifers relaxed and rested is a key ingredient to maximizing their milk output.

"It's a huge rule in cow health and producing milk," he said.

Another way to count dairy cows is to review a CAFO's records for milk production and divide that number by the amount of milk dairy heifers typically produce, Patten said. Under ideal circumstances, dairy heifers produce about 70 pounds - 8.1 gallons - of milk per lactating day. Heifers can have up to 305 lactating days per year, meaning the number of "dry" heifers on a dairy operation equals about 15 percent of the number of lactating heifers at any given time.

So, to estimate the number of heifers on a dairy operation, divide the number of pounds of milk produced there each day by 70, then add 15 percent of the resulting number.

That calculation may not be exactly correct, given the number of variables that figure into any large scale counting of animals, but it will be close enough to determine if a more precise count is required.

On beef feedlots, Patten said he generally favors a method similar to that used to count diary cattle. Instead of counting lockups or milk produced, he measures the linear feet of feeding area and divides it by the space typically taken up by one beef cow.

A date for the training in Cassia County has yet to be set, but Patten said he is certain it will be before Christmas.

Price said she has no idea what to expect from it.

"I've never had any experience in having to go out and do anything like this," she said.

Sven Berg is a staff writer for the South Idaho Press.