The winner of the simple category of the 2023 Farmers Weekly Inventions Competition is Jim Gould with his automatic dairy foot-bath doser.

After years battling digital dermatitis across his 200-cow herd, Somerset dairy farmer Mr Gould took the opportunity when building a new dairy to install a scrape-through foot-bath.

This catches the washings after each milking, but regularly needs a shot of formalin – a job that was neither easy to remember nor particularly pleasant.

His solution was to cobble together an automatic dosing system using an old forager additive pump and speed controller.

See also: Simple steps to stamp out digital dermatitis in dairy herds

© Jim Gould

These are hooked up to a 12V battery via a daily timer, meaning he can vary how long the pump runs for to alter the amount of chemical applied.

Twice a week he has it dish out a stiffer treatment, which helps get on top of problems, but is infrequent enough to avoid causing irritation.

The automatic bathing system has transformed herd health over the past 18 months, he says, preventing isolated outbreaks spreading and cutting dermatitis cases by 75%.

Better still, it cost less than £100 to build.