About ten days ago AMTS released an update of the AMTS.Cattle™.Pro ration balancing program. Lynn sent you an email blast and (if you had downloaded the major update in April) your program informed you that there was a newer version of .Pro available for download. Most of you should have been able to update by just using a patch. If you had an older version of the program, you may have had to un-install AMTS.Pro (again, very simple—don’t worry, none of the Farm Files get deleted) and then download from the webpage.
Tom and Vijay have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work making sure the most current and correct CNCPS biology is incorporated. They are involved as the Cornell Group headed by Dr. Mike VanAmburgh researches and develops the model to improve performance predictions. The AMTS development group has added rates, digestibilies, and parameters to the input and output side of the program at pace with research as the Model evolves. Many of these program changes are not immediately noticeable as you use the program. Sometimes the program changes fix bugs or improve performance; these changes often are the result of suggestions and requests from .Pro users (so keep those recommendations coming). Lynn is a critical part of the planning process as she runs the front lines with users. This makes her the List Master, ask nicely and she will see that your requests get attention!
Obi wan Lynn–List Master
One of the new features this time around is the ability to Reorder Recipes. As you work diets, likely you find that, in a given farm, even though you may have multiple recipes that you feed to multiple groups, you routinely do 80% of your diet formulation in one recipe. It would be nice if the Recipes screen always opened in that diet. Well, now it does. Vijay tweaked the program to add a Reorder Recipes feature. You can set the program to display the diet you do most of your work in when you open the Recipes screen. On farms where there are many diets or you have many “trial” diets set up, this can be a helpful convenience. Not a big deal, but convenient. Here is an explanation of how that works.
Another, small but appreciated feature, in the latest version is the ability to easily ascertain when the last time you updated the program and when your license expires. This is something Lynn campaigned for and got. It makes it easy for Lynn to have clients check that information if they call for technical assistance.
