Every system on the farm has its own dashboard of some kind, offering insights into KPIs such as milking speed, body condition, nutrition and more. Yet no matter how much information you’re getting from each system, time and money are lost when the dashboards don’t work with each other, or worse, aren’t used at all.
“Dairymen have less time than ever and more sites than ever to be able to manage, and they need consistency across their systems, their data and their operations,” says Katharine Lotspeich of Dairy Data Partners. “And they need to be able to manage those effectively and profitably.”
Dairy Data Partners (DDP) is a service from Intelligent Dairy Solutions, based in Scotland – a division of Peacock Technology. Founder Stuart MacLennan, together with Lotspeich and Tia Buss, detailed their mission during a Knowledge Nook session at this year’s World Dairy Expo in October.
“People are saying they have so much data they don’t know what to do,” MacLennan says. “So we thought, let’s see if we can help. We are a young player in this space and do not pretend to be the best, but we’re on our journey.”
Through a proprietary system, DDP transforms complex data into clear, real-time insights delivered directly to producers via tools like SMS or WhatsApp.
“We centralize data to standardize the analysis and give it context, because without context, data can’t deliver on its potential,” Lotspeich says. “We work with dairymen to identify their goals and their priorities. Along with their management team, we create custom, easy-to-read reports on a continual basis that enable our dairymen to be able to make confident decisions based on the data that they’re receiving.”
One farmer that has seen favorable results from this service is Blaine Nicks of Hunter Ridge Dairy in Ault, Colo. “With the DDP reports that we’re getting, primarily with our feeding programs, it allows me to consolidate maybe a couple hours worth of work into a few minutes and make decisions based on that, rather than trying to pull everything together and make sure it all makes sense,” Nicks says.
Nicks uses the reports with his team for a clear way to communicate inefficiencies and how to improve. He’s found areas to improve in feeding and milking routines, and his team sets their goals based on what each can see and act on.
According to Buss, another advantage of DDP is predicting issues before they become a problem.
“Being able to automate the adjustments and optimize the management that comes out of these actions is saving a lot of time,” she says. “As Blaine said, he’s able to spend his time a lot more efficiently.
“What we’ve learned so far is that you can find efficiency gains in all aspects of the dairy, not just within the cow,” Buss adds. “You can take these to make small, targeted changes that add up to much larger results in the long run. Tech and artificial intelligence are great tools, but they do not need to be used to replace the stakeholders in the management processes.”
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