Dairy farmers know additional about dairy cows right now than generations ahead of them. Why? The adoption of technologies on farms is a key purpose.
Most farmers use information from revolutionary technologies to realize the biology behind their dairy herds to make improved choices and grow to be additional effective.
“With information, we are mastering that our cows are altering more than time and are enhancing their production, so farmers can not use information from ten years ago to make choices right now since we had diverse animals back then along with diverse technologies and nutrition,” says Veridiana Daley, Purina Mills senior researcher of adult dairy cows.
According to a current Association of Gear Suppliers report, advancing revolutionary technologies with dairy cow genetics and automated management systems on farms are the most important contributing components in lowering the dairy industry’s carbon footprint, equivalent to taking four million automobiles off the road.
The report also discovered that today’s dairy herd produces 4 instances as considerably as the worldwide typical, with 16 million fewer cows. In addition, farmers’ adoption of technologies has saved adequate water to provide New York City for two years.
“Dairy farming can be complicated. Farmers are below a lot of anxiety, time crunches, and tight profit margins. The target of working with technologies is to enable farmers make improved choices, locate the bottlenecks of their operation, and be additional lucrative at the finish of the day,” says Alex Tebbe, a dairy technical specialist with Purina.
The creation of a higher-grade dairy cow
Genomic testing and genetic choice for desirable traits such as milk yield have helped farmers build additional productive dairy cows.
Most dairies are testing heifer calves to see which ones will genetically make appropriate replacements in their herd. The tests show the genetic prospective of milk production, says David Erf, senior veterinarian of dairy technical solutions with Zoetis.
“When we genomic test calves, it can predict their future,” says Erf. “The target is to locate which animals will be additional lucrative for dairies.”
Genetic testing and choice let farmers to cut down the quantity of cows that are not expense-powerful.
“Testing enables us to genetically locate additional of these difficulty-no cost cows that are very good at production, very good at reproduction, and in very good overall health since a cow that can excel in these 3 places, she’s going to be a lucrative cow for any farm,” Erf says.
Farmers have additional effective use of time and sources
Nowadays, the most comprehensive use of technologies on dairy farms is a robotic milking program, which has revolutionized the milking parlor.
A robotic milking program can bring additional flexibility to dairy farmers and let them to concentrate on other tasks, such as crop perform, since they are no longer tied to a cow, says Suzanne Meck, chief operations officer of AMS Galaxy USA, a provider of precision dairy farming gear.
In a robotic milking program, a sensor detects the cows present and automatically cleans the cows’ teats ahead of and immediately after attaching the milker. In addition, the program will gather information from a cow’s collar – which is considerably like a Fitbit device for humans — to track her milking time, pounds of milk developed, and rumination.
“Cows can milk themselves about the clock. So perhaps you do not have to be concerned about receiving up at the crack of dawn the subsequent morning to commence chores,” says Meck.
In most situations, a robotic or automatic milking program can also imply that cows devote additional time in the barn. According to Meck, that can make it difficult for farmers to get into barns to clean out pens and supply fresh bedding.
Having said that, there are automated cleaning systems such as a flush program, scrapers, and robotic manure collectors that drag via the barn and take manure to a deposit location, says Meck.
“Automated gear does a very good job since it really is operating about the clock,” she adds.
Most manure management systems also have water-saving processes and water use tracking capabilities to enable farmers make improved choices with water sources.
Farms are also updating to automated bedding systems, which enable cut down bedding waste by placing out compact qualities all through the day. In addition, automated bedding improves cow overall health and comfort, says Meck.
“This kind of automation enables the farmer to bed their cows 3 to 4 instances a day, as opposed to as soon as or twice a week the manual way,” adds Meck. “The cows also like obtaining that fresh bedding often.”
Making use of information from technologies to improved management decisions
Nowadays, 1 cow can build additional than two billion information points more than her lifetime. According to Daley, most dairy farms are gathering physical information points from a variety of computer software or monitoring technologies that gather additional than a hundred kinds of facts.
Farms at a additional basic level with herds that only do Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI) tests as soon as a month are nonetheless gathering 5 to ten information points on their cows month-to-month, adds Tebbe.
Having said that, measuring and comparing information to locate bottlenecks on a farm can be challenging when there is no uncomplicated way to integrate the information from the a variety of technologies on a farm. Tebbe says that is exactly where Addie, a Purina dairy record evaluation system, comes in. It collects information from all the management computer software technologies becoming applied on the farm and creates a report with actionable insights producers can use to improve financial prospective.
“Farms that have embraced technologies can have 4 or six diverse computer software systems collecting all their information. In the way Purina has constructed Addie, the program integrates information from these computer software systems, in an uncomplicated-to realize kind, enabling us commence to realize the complete image of the farm,” says Tebbe.
“Addie is a tool or technologies that is all about the cows,” adds Daley.
In working with the collected information, farmers appear for approaches to be additional effective with their sources, such as making additional milk production with significantly less feed or detecting illness earlier in cows ahead of it impacts their nicely-becoming.
“Farmers are curious men and women. They normally want to know additional, and they ask good concerns, so we can take their concerns and transform their information to get the answers they require to succeed,” adds Tebbe.
