Enhanced Farm Management at Your Fingertips
“Digital technologies are the future of dairy farms; farmers will have a competitive advantage in the future when they invest in these technologies,” says Aidan Connolly, President of AgriTech Capital, host of the 2022 World Dairy Expo Tech Spotlight in Madison, WI.
“With the WDE tech spotlight, we are offering leading dairy tech companies an opportunity to present their technology to producers and answer some commonly asked questions they might get at a tradeshow from producers,” he adds.
During both a virtual session prior to World Dairy Expo, and an in-person session in Madison, each of the nine companies from around the world had an opportunity to showcase their technology, business model and experience with producers. They then fielded questions from the audience and a panel of dairy experts including Dr. Jeffrey Bewley, Dr. Michael Hutjens and Dr. Julio Giordana.
Nedap was the first company to apply RFID to cows in the 1970’s. According to Nedap’s Tera Baker, their history in the industry sets them apart when it comes to their new products, such as CowControl. CowControl combines activity monitoring and location tracking with augmented reality and integrates with most herd management systems for seamless integration into the farm’s current systems.
Baker says, “Tracking cows 24/7 at any scale of herd allows you to pinpoint cows to manage by exception without disrupting the whole herd.”
SmaXtec, according to CEO Stefan Scherer, is changing the way we understand cows. Their unique bolus system that measures activity and rumination from inside the cow is part of a 24/7 health manager system that can reduce medication use, maintain performance and improve KPI’s. Scherer says producers see a return on investment in the monthly monitoring model with reduced medication, more milk and less labor.
Milk Moovement focuses on milk traceability throughout the value chain, helping track and move milk efficiently from farm to processor and beyond. CEO Rob Forsythe says their easy-to-use app provides real-time pick-up and drop-off data, truck route planning and tracking, historical milk data comparison, production predictions and more. He says, “It’s not massive amounts of new data; it’s getting the right data into the right hands at the right time so that decisions can be made and issues can be seen.”
Milc Group introduced the “animal” app, a new piece in their herd management suite that includes “one feed, train trac and one facility.” Along with several familiar features of a herd management app, animal offers a way to help manage the people completing day-to-day tasks on the farm. Milc Group’s Ramon Gomez says, “The advantage of all this data going to the same database is that we can take pieces from feed, herd management, employee and parlor management to eventually come up with an analysis and diagnosis for the dairy.”
Labby offers both in-line and hand-held milk quality testing for early mastitis detection. Co-Founder and CEO Julia Somerdin says, “Profitability is always top of mind. When you look at the potential loss from mastitis, between milk yield and premiums, treatments and labor, it’s a 5% revenue loss. With this type of early detection, you can make your initial capital investment back within six to twelve months.”
The Labby in-line testing system works in both robotic and conventional barns.
Ever.Ag is solving the dairy industry’s complexity challenges by enabling the overlay of all data sources and systems in one location, viewable on an easy-to-use dashboard interface. Ryne Braun discussed the importance of automatically capturing objective data in real-time, without the margin of human error, judgment or bias. Ever.Ag achieves this by leveraging data from Cainthus, ALUS nutrition and ALUS Behavior.
EIO Diagnostics CEO Tamara Lee says they are offering something completely different in the world of mastitis detection. “We like to call it a clear picture of udder health,” she adds. The Udderhealth mastitis system is an infrared camera installed on a rotary parlor that instantly analyzes each cow as it comes around the rotary. The analysis is based on a rolling five days of data, and the low-maintenance system is set up to alert milkers of data deviations in real time.
Dalex is a leading provider of feed formulation software for dairy, beef and swine that provides ration formulation at www.dalex.com. Dalex’s Dallas Shaw says, “This isn’t just a calculator – it accounts for biology and economics. Moving data around efficiently and free from error is critical.” The system is designed to integrate with herd management systems, accommodate multiple feed models and species and can be used by companies, nutritionists and individuals.
Cattle Eye offers the world’s first machine vision solution for monitoring livestock. A camera mounted at the parlor exit scans each animal to provide a locomotion score and is proven to detect laminitis better than a human can. CEO Terry Canning says Cattle Eye is working towards a hoof health ecosystem, collaborating with hoof trimmers and other hoof health companies and integrating with herd management systems.
Of the Tech Spotlight, World Dairy Expo General Manager Laura Herschleb says, “We know the pivotal role technology has played in getting us to where we are today, and there’s no denying that it’s going to play that impactful part in where we go with animal health, profitability and so many things.”
The full recording of the virtual Tech Spotlight session can be found at wdetechspotlight.agritechcapital.com/livestream.
