‘You don’t want to get busier on your dairy farm’

It’s a common morning routine for many: checking your mobile phone for the latest emails and news. Dairy farmers rather check something else first: the heat and health status of their cows.

Just like these dairy farmers who are all working with Nedap CowControl: “It’s all about creating peace of mind”.

Brian Mooney: “You don’t want to get busier”

In the morning and afternoon, just before the milking starts, Brian Mooney checks his phone to see which cows are in heat and ready for insemination.

Mooney runs a spring pasture based dairy farm with 220 cows with 100 hectares of land in Kill, County Waterford, Ireland.

The cows are connected to the Nedap CowControl system, a cow monitoring system that continuously tracks the cow behaviour and notifies him of heat and health issues on the herd.

“Last night I got a notification at 9 o’clock that a cow has a possible health issue. So I went out and saw that she was indeed not well. I brought her in and treated her for grass tetany.

“Now I don’t know if she ever had grass tetany or not, but in the morning she was 100% fit again. Without the early alert I could have a cow down in the field this morning or maybe a dead cow”, Brian explains.

Mooney’s farm has been growing over the years, just like many dairy operations all over the world. An extra staff member is not always an option to manage and watch the cows.

The use of cow sensor technology can ease the workload for seasonal calving and grass based systems like Mooney’s to guarantee that the cows are closely monitored 24/7 for heat, health and grazing time.

Mooney explains: “Having a cow monitoring system in place is just like having another person watching your cows. You’re watching them yourself, but herds are so big nowadays.

“You’re going to miss things, you’re just not going to see everything so you just need an extra hand. It’s not how it changes it, it’s how it keeps things the same.

“The farm has changed and the farm has gotten bigger. You want to be able to stay the same, not get busier and get more labor units”.

Evan Williams: Data available at all times

Also in Australia it is a continuous challenge to keep a close eye on cows.

Evan Williams runs a 300-cow family-based dairy farm in Yannathan, Victoria with 200 hectares of land with his wife Sheriden, their daughter Georgie and her husband Graeme Lowndes.

They use Nedap technology in the form of GEA’s CowScout monitoring system. It is part of the GEA robotic milking system and powered by Nedap.

Nedap partners with a range of leading companies in milking equipment and genetics who integrate their identification and animal monitoring solutions in the products and services they offer to farmers.

This way their solutions are powered by Nedap technology. “With this technology, the cows wear CowScout tags that track their heat activity, eating, rumination and inactive behavior.

Evan shows how the data is presented: “It’s on our phones and on our PCs. So it just made our farm get a lot closer to us and we can keep track of the health of our cows.”

100% trust in the system

With the introduction of the automated system, the daily working routine changed on the farm.

Graeme explains the difference: “Basically we used to check the cows as they would come on the milking platform. If we saw cows that would normally come on first and then were down towards the back of the yard, we would know that there’s something wrong with them.”

Now Graeme starts his day by checking the computer to see if there are any cows in the health report.

The system registers the behavior of the cows, presents clear attention lists and sends out notifications directly via emails or through the app in urgent situations.

“Checking those data takes us only a couple of minutes. It allows us more time with the kids or with the family.”

Sheriden is also very convinced of the benefits. I would definitely miss the system if it wasn’t there anymore. I have learned to just 100% rely on the system. Because I know it’s working for us”, Graeme explains.

Scott McKillop: Improving farm efficiency

For farms that synchronize the cows, it is extremely important to be able to rely on accurate heat detection.

For Australian dairy farmer Scott McKillop from Dederang, Victoria, the use of his Alta COW WATCH system, which is also powered by Nedap, is the key to better reproduction results and higher work efficiency.

“When you are using a synchronization program, you have so many cows on heat at the same time”, says McKillop. He has a dairy farm with three hundred and seventy dairy cows.

With the aim of improving efficiency on the dairy farm and obtaining more data to make better decisions, the dairy farmer chose Alta COW WATCH.

“This system gives us a lot more insight into the heat of cows and their health, saving a lot of time.

“With this system you clearly get the optimal time to inseminate. So that just simplified the whole system significantly and really made a big difference to our time management and use of our labor on our farm”.

“McKillop also uses the insights into the eating, rumination and activity pattern. “If you see a decrease in feed intake or an increase in inactivity, this could indicate an infection or illness in the cow or an incentive to change the ration.

Discovering the reasons why you should or should not do something is a really strong part of this system.”

Payback period

Investing in technology helps companies move forward. But that investment must ultimately pay off.

Scott estimates the payback time of the Alta COW WATCH system, powered by Nedap CowControl, at approximately three years.

Thanks to COW WATCH, he has managed to organize the labour at this single person operation in a smarter way and getting more cows in calf.

“It’s difficult to put a value on the health of the animals, but I would say the payback time is comfortably within three years”, says Scott.

“We can’t imagine not having the system right now. It’s part of our everyday management on the farm. It helps take a lot of guesswork out of what you’re doing.

“It’s really the cream on the cake. Or rather: the cream on top of the milk”, he concludes.

The Nedap technology can be fitted to each type of farm and the farmer’s demands, and can be integrated in other equipment or sold as a stand alone system.

Nedap has strong business partners in the UK. Get in touch with them to learn more.