Do you ever wish you had a 24-hour herds person who never showed up late, never complained, and picked up on a problem with a cow better than you could?
Well, that’s what automation has done for Jessica Pralle Trimner.
At Miltrim Farms, home to 3,400 cows, technology is the backbone of their operations, featuring 30 milking robots under one roof, along side a 1,400-cow conventional herringbone parlor.
Jessica Pralle Trimner, the dairy manager at Miltrim Farms in Athens, Wisconsin, shares how integrating advanced tech and data-driven practices has revolutionize their dairy operations in Episode 118 on the Uplevel Dairy Podcast.
“I’m here working with cows and people every day, and I’m grateful for the facilities and the team. We’ve come a long way from the days when teammates didn’t even know how to use Microsoft Word, let alone Dairy Comp software,” Trimner says. “Today, we’re leveraging real-time data to transform transition cow management and empowering employees with data-driven insights.”
Data-Driven Decisions and Technology Integration
Jessica shares how the unique setup at Miltrim Farms, with both a conventional parlor and a robot barn, allows her to gather and utilize a wide range of data. This dual system helps in making accurate decisions, from managing vaccine protocols to optimizing repro programs.
“Technology for us skyrocketed when we built the robot facility in 2019. The collars and sorting gates essentially act as a 24-hour herdsman, alerting us to cows that need attention. We’ve seen benefits in days open reduction and improved cow health, thanks to activity and rumination data,” she adds.
Enhancing Employee Training through Data
Training employees to use tech tools effectively has been a focus at Miltrim Farms. Jessica explains how they’ve managed to get employees up to speed with the available tools, turning data into actionable insights.
She explains, “We all come from different walks of life. And I am forever grateful for my herdsman, Mary. She comes from a 40 cow dairy, you don’t find people who see cows like my parents see cows or my grandpa saw cows, and that’s not something you can train. And so she’s been able to take that and empower her employees down in the robot barn. I throw a lot of my interns with her and right now, it’s very easy for us to get that generation to understand the data before they understand the cow themselves.”
“And that data provides that support back to us, so then they can have that ‘a-ha’ moment when they’re like, I see it, I see this cow, and I understand why you keep talking about what she looks like and not what the report says. To me, that’s one of the biggest things,” Trimner says.
Listen to the entire Uplevel Dairy Podcast, here:
