Sensors

A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 18:24:44 GMT

With a visual form ripped straight from a skin-crawl inducing robot thriller, Tesla’s new AI-bot, Optimus, is eliciting strong reactions from tech advocates and flip-phone touting technophobes.

Let’s indulge our imaginations for just a second and imagine how a farmer could put one of Musk’s $20,000 helper robots to work around the family farm in, say, the year 2040. I use 2040 because, even though the prototypes in the video below look awesome, it turns out the AI behind it needs more work before any farmer would feel safe setting a squad of them loose on the farm.

Our own Clinton Griffiths was also inspired by Optimus’ unveiling. In his upcoming column in the November issue of Farm Journal, Clinton gets right to the heart of the issue, and that’s whether the bots will pan out on the farm?

The real test, he writes, “will be whether it can keep its glossy finish motoring along regardless of whether or not the field is mud-free.”

I couldn’t agree more, Clinton. Serving up fancy drinks during an unveiling party on a glitzy Hollywood film studio lot is one thing. Standing up to all the dust and heat and tough conditions of your average farm or ranch is a different beast altogether.

In that vein, we offer up the following farm chore list Optimus can take over from here on out.

No, seriously Opti, you don’t need our permission. Just go ahead and take care of these few little things every single day for the rest of time, and we’ll be off, I don’t know, fishing at the lake with the kids, rocking on the front porch, or something.

Farm equipment maintenance tech
Director of crop protection jug disposal
Backpack spraying around-the-clock weed warrior
Chief grain bin inspector
Head ladder climber
Irrigation pivot inspector general
Head high in July crop scout
Pig loader and unloader extraordinaire
Master bottle mixer and calf feeder

Now that you’ve read my list, I’m curious how you would use a robot that walks, talks and moves like a real human (and never gets tired, bored or spends 20 minutes staring at its phone) on your farm? or click

Share your robot wish list by clicking the green “Respond Here” button or click here .

Your Next Read: As the Wizard of Yield, Ken Ferrie Reveals His Secrets on Unscripted

What Should You Financially Consider Before Investing in Technology?

Fri, 26 Apr 2024 15:03:03 GMT

From rumination collars and parlor monitoring systems, to cameras and robotic milking, technology advancements can be seen all across dairies in the U.S.

With financial challenges facing dairy farms, Curtis Gerrits, senior animal ag lending specialist for dairy with Compeer Financial, says it is essential for producers to evaluate how these technology investments impact their farm’s overall financial position when reviewing business updates and opportunities.

“In today’s world, evaluating financial metrics is crucial due to rising costs, global supply and demand dynamics, narrow profit margins and ongoing market volatility,” he says.

Gerrits offers the following tips for producers to consider before making significant capital purchases for their farm.

Return on Assets: To investigate any major capital purchase, start by determining the return on the assets (ROA) for your operation. Calculate ROA by adding the operation’s net income plus interest and then divide it by the average of total farm assets. As capital investment costs rise, understanding the financial impact and return on investment is vital. Establish a business threshold for ROA, such as greater than 8%, for consistent measurement across all capital purchases. If the calculated return is less than 5%, proceed with caution, as the capital could be better used elsewhere in your business.
Balance Sheet – Post Purchase: After a significant purchase, complete a “post-purchase” balance sheet to evaluate your expected net worth and owner’s equity. Larger capital purchases often lower overall owner equity, so understanding this impact is important. Aim for a “post-purchase” owner’s equity of 50% or greater, providing flexibility to mitigate marketplace volatility by leveraging assets as needed.
Liquidity: Evaluate your liquidity position, particularly cash or line of credit availability, when making a capital purchase. Considering the importance of liquidity in the global agriculture environment, use caution when deploying cash for such purchases. Assess where your ending cash/liquidity will be after the purchase to ensure financial stability for production agriculture operations.
Other Areas of the Business: When considering the capital purchase, review its potential impact on other aspects of your business. Will the asset improve labor efficiency and reduce costs? Is it replacing an existing asset, reducing repairs, updates or supply usage? Alternatively, could the new asset increase expenses due to being unfamiliar to your operation? Consider the expected life span of the investment and understand its complete impact on profitability.
Insurance Consideration: Before making a large capital purchase, assess the insurance coverage on the asset. Given recent volatility in the insurance market, especially for technologically advanced agricultural equipment, review replacement costs, premiums and your insurance carrier’s position on the asset. Ensure proper insurance coverage to mitigate additional capital outlays in the event of damage or loss.

8 Additional Tips

Independent dairy financial consultant, Gary Sipiorski, says technology will continue to advance and come to us. He recommends producers think of these considerations before making a purchase.

Research the information with sales reps and on the internet.
Talk with your trusted service people such as veterinarian, lender, equipment people, milk field person etc.
Remember the old cliché - it is okay to be on the leading edge but be careful not to be on the bleeding edge.
Go and see is a must. Talk with producers who are using the technology. Technology in general is expensive and mistakes are costly.
Do a business plan with family and key employees to get their input.
Do a projected cash flow with realistic figures.
Match the useful life of the technology with the loan amortization.
More than likely the money will have to be borrowed. Lender buy is important.

Finally, Sipiorski says to keep emotions out of the decision, as technology investments must be a business decision and “not just a want.”

To Read More on Dairy Technology:

4 Ways to Focus a Tech Audit

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 23:00:09 GMT

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

There is a tremendous amount of new technology available these days, and the list is constantly growing.

While technology access and options might be the greatest in the history of farming, implementing and benefiting from the deployment of such technology, in many cases, is an entirely different story.

Most traditional row-crop and livestock operations have limited resources to devote to this area, especially in the wake of rising costs of iron, inputs and interest. When resources and cash flow are running tight, investment in new technology is typically one of the first players to be cut from the team.

In today’s farming environment, putting the capital into technology is paramount for the viability and growth of the business. To make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck, start with a technology audit before making decisions about how to maximize those resources.

The focus of a farm technology audit, and subsequent purchase plans, can be based on these four key areas:

(Farm Journal)

1. Grow business revenue.
The first thing farmers think about when growing the farm is growing the number of acres or bushels. But today’s technology also allows for ways to grow business revenues without expending a mountain of capital resources. For example, more comprehensive digital field and grain bin tracking technology allows for more targeted contracts based more on a crop’s condition and digital data pedigree than solely its yield. There’s also emerging sustainability markets where the revenue is totally decoupled from the crop itself. The catch-all of these new opportunities are impossible to scale without digitizing the farm from top to bottom.

(Farm Journal)

Increase productivity.
Automating tasks and processes can help with costs and performance. Auto-steer is likely one of agriculture’s greatest examples of a technology that checked this box on a massive scale. In a Southern Agricultural Economics Association auto-steer impact study, the authors saw, in some cases, ROIs approaching nearly 25% productivity gains. As robotics and artificial intelligence advance, agriculture is ripe for leapfrog gains in this area.

(Farm Journal)

3. Reduce costs.
Shrinking costs and reducing complexity can help even small and medium-sized farms enable growth. Hands down, automatic swath control and planter clutch technology have been two of precision agriculture’s greatest ROI technologies. Even a decades-old Auburn University study reported input savings ranging between 1% and 12% per field. As even more targeted input technologies evolve and are brought to market, this will certainly be an area to keep your eye on.

(Farm Journal)

4. Stabilize daily operation.
Technology has become the heartbeat of a modern farm. In fact, technology has become so embedded that in some cases it is absolutely critical to the daily operation of the business. For example, nearly 50% of acres planted to corn, soybeans, cotton and winter wheat are now managed with auto-steer and guidance systems. What happens if the GPS constellation failed or was jammed by a foreign hacker? On an individual farm, what happens when the electrical grid goes out and automated fans don’t turn on for a grain bin full of wet grain or a chicken production facility.

Ask Yourself These Questions

Peeling back the layers on how your farm is doing in each of these four areas comes down to answering some detailed and pointed questions about your farm’s overall technical health. Those questions include:

What technology is missing that I absolutely need today or especially will need tomorrow.
Do my technology pieces play nice together and talk to each other?
Am I really using the technology I already have and the data that comes with it?

In the real world, those questions might sound something like:

Do I need to digitize and record more of my field activities, such as anhydrous or crop protection applications?
If I don’t, am I risking future opportunities in this new age of Climate Smart Commodities and carbon credits?
Is my yield monitor so old they don’t even make memory card readers to download the data?
Will my John Deere tractor talk to my new Kinze planter?

Finding the right technology balance will be unique to your farm. Labor, equipment, land and your specific farming practices all play into what technology best serves your goals. If your biggest pain point is labor, start by increasing your focus on automation. For others, it might be the need to find ways to reduce inputs with auto-swath technology.
It’s important to mention that technological harmony on your farm cannot be solved by geeking out and going on a gadget-buying spree. That usually only creates more problems. Before you buy anything new, take an actual physical inventory of the current technology on your farm. This baseline is a pretty good indicator of your farm’s overall technical health.

(Farm Journal)

Ghosts of precision ag’s past

If more than a couple pieces of technology on your farm were put in use or manufactured before Y2K hysteria was an issue, they probably should be taken out and parked in a digital fence row somewhere. There’s no lack of ghosts of precision ag’s past still present on many of today’s farms.
This is the realm still haunted by the YM2000, PF 3000 and Greenstar “brown box” yield monitors. These are the office shop drawers filled with Ziploc bags full of SRAM, PC and Compact-Flash memory cards fragilely hold onto the data of harvests’ past.

Antique analog-era technology is impeding the adoption of newer technologies with greater benefits and simplified ease of use. Curious what happens from holding on to technology far beyond its expiration date? Just ask Southwest Airlines. Its years of cumulating “technological debt,” or old tech, caused their infamous holiday meltdown. Your farm and our industry are susceptible as well.

The only thing worse than old technology is no technology. Realistically, finding no technology on a farm today is rare. However, many farms are stuck in a tech rut where the portfolio hasn’t grown beyond a yield monitor and auto-steer. In the age of sustainability and consumer transparency, it is going to take way more digitization than that. Literally, every pass across a field will need to be recorded.

What about your inner circle?

That means when you are doing your tech audit, it should include assessing your technology as well as the technology of your trusted inner circle — your co-op or commercial applicator, your crop scout, crop insurance agent and your agronomist. All that technology creates data that must interact with yours.

Finally, not investing in technology is not an option — if you want to survive. Since the dawn of precision farming, the industry’s mentality has been that technology falls into more of a luxury category than treating it as the capital expense it should be.

The technology treadmill in agriculture has always been unforgiving. Without knowing where you stand and where you’re headed, you’re going to be in for a bumpy ride because today’s technology treadmill has just accelerated to warp speed.

More Smart Farming content for you:

8 Field Activity Data Types You Need to Collect Now

Here’s How to Bridge the Data Gap With Your Ag Retailer

10 Easy Ways to Take Your Crop-Scouting Practices to the Next Level

VES-Artex Unveils New Cow Cooling Technology: Intelligent Soaker 2.0

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 21:43:10 GMT

While the weather has certainly been mild this winter, thermometers will soon begin to boil as summer temperatures make their way across the country. With the warmer temperatures comes the increased risk of heat stress, which can contribute to a wide array of health and production setbacks for dairy cattle.

To combat this, VES-Artex has recently unveiled a new soaking system, Intelligent Soaker 2.0, which is designed to help alleviate heat stress while significantly reducing water usage on dairy farms. The system utilizes intelligent sensor technology to spray water when a cow is present based on temperature setpoints.

VES-Artex says that key features of the Intelligent Soaker 2.0 include easy installation, compatibility with existing systems and durable stainless-steel nozzles. In addition, the system’s cow-friendly LED light indicator simplifies monitoring, signaling when units are active and when they are in dwell mode.

The Intelligent Soaker 2.0 behaves similarly to a traditional soaker with both on and off intervals. Upon sensing a cow, the unit will begin soaking for 45 seconds, then it will enter a dwell mode where it won’t soak, even if a new cow comes within its range for 5 minutes.

“The Intelligent Soaker 2.0 addresses the dual challenge of animal welfare and sustainability,” says Dr. Mario Mondaca, Senior Technical Applications and Research Engineer at VES-Artex. “By minimizing water waste, farms can achieve a more sustainable operation while providing much needed heat abatement for the herd.”

According to the company, the new technology can help reduce water usage by 50%-70% when compared to traditional soaking systems. Unlike conventional soakers that operate continuously even after temperature thresholds are met, the Intelligent Soaker 2.0 optimizes water usage by delivering targeted cooling precisely when and where it’s needed.

“If you look at how the cow spends her day, she is feeding and in the alleys around 28% of the time,” Dr. Mondaca says. “This is why we are seeing reductions close to 70% on some days when compared to a system running all day long on a timer.”

With water conservation becoming a key focus for many dairy producers, the high-tech soaking system could be a compelling solution to conserve water and increase sustainability all while maximizing cow cooling.

For more on Smart Farming, read:

Wearable Technology is Not Just for People

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 03:12:01 GMT

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

Something wasn’t right. Milk was down. Feed intake plummeted. Standing time increased. The cows stood at the bunk looking listless, yet they refused to eat, sometimes for days at a time. Activity systems across the board were showing a rapid drop in rumination.

These were the conditions that we and our partnering consultants experienced at several of our client’s farms for the last month and a half.

Something was critically wrong.

But what was causing it?
Why were several herds down thousands of lbs of milk?

We’ve come a long way from the days of, “Help, I’ve fallen and can’t get up” commercials.

From the NBA to Michael Phelps to your local PTA director everyone wants the latest wearable. No longer a simple button, the term “wearables” refers to any device we can sport, from patches to smart watches that can be attached to our bodies to monitor and manage our performance.

Becoming More Precise

As wearables have grown in popularity, the science has evolved as well. By integrating complex biosensors into our lives, we are now capable of knowing more about our bodies than ever!

The beauty of this is that our dairy researchers are catching up and integrating these innovations into our industry. Building their own unique dairy versions of these technologies.

The biosensors housed within these dairy specific wearable devices allow us to continually monitor a range of biometrics such as rumination, activity, bunk time, water intake, rest time, temperature, gps location in the pen, and even stress hormone levels. We are just beginning to see the application of these devices in the dairy industry.

For example, research at Cornell by McArt and Seely has suggested that rumination could be used as a substitute for much more expensive and invasive blood testing. This would allow for accurate, economic detection of subclinical milk fever. Yielding more targeted treatment and preventing secondary transition cow diseases such as ketosis, metritis, or DA’s as well as decreased milk production.

Diving Deeper into Herd Health

For the first time in history, we have the ability to intervene upon disease not just at a sub-clinical (before observation is possible) level but at the very moment of it’s inciting event.

This was what they hoped to do in this presenting case by IDing the very inciting event that had derailed these dairies.

By this point they had eliminated all the usual suspects, mycotoxins, starch levels, fiber digestibility etc. They were convinced it was a palatability issue. But what product could the culprit be? With such complex rations, highly variable protein and mineral mixes how would the team ever be able to know they picked the right product?

To aid this analysis the team of highly qualified veterinarians and nutrition professionals would have to trust these wearables. They would have to trust those “earrings and necklaces” to tell us when they were on the right track.

So, they did just that. Product by product the ration was adjusted to eliminate potential causes. After the change, they waited with bated breath and watched intakes, feeding time and rumination rates almost hourly. Hoping for that bump that suggested they had found the offender.

It was not a quick or flawless process. It was filled with frustration by owners and consultants alike. More than one hard conversation was had.

Several weeks after the inciting event, after three or four iterations of product removals, the source was found. Suddenly, intakes went up, rumination jumped almost 20%, and slowly the milk came back as well.

All this was aided by a wearable “necklace or earring” placed on a cow. The ability to ID the smallest ingredient, the smallest inciting change, and intervene, hopefully, before it becomes a bigger issue. That’s the power of biometrics. That’s the future of our industry.

For more on Smart Farming, read:

How These Three Dairies Went from Good to Great

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:06:00 GMT

Success is often shaped by values, found through hardships and the stimulus for momentum. If we learn anything from our 2023 Milk Business Award winners, it’s there is no cookie-cutter formula to achieve success, although each winner illustrates tenacity, passion and the ability to work hard. While all three award winners have different journeys to the farm, not one of them backed away from what it took to help their operations go from good to great, as they leaned into technology, communication and sound management practices.

Young Producer winner

The 2023 Milk Business Young Producer award winner is a fifth-generation dairy farmer from Remington, Va. Ben Smith, owns and operates Cool Lawn, LLC., a 900-cow registered Holstein herd consisting of 17 employees, and 3,000 rented and owned acres. Smith also helps with his family’s ice cream business, Moo Thru.

With the goal to return to his family farm, Smith headed to Virginia Tech to continue his education and conducted summer internships in Pennsylvania, Geogia and South Dakota that equipped him to help advance his family’s dairy. Smith said two pieces of advice have stuck with him, “Don’t let school get in the way of your education, and the key to success is being extremely good at the things nobody else wants to do.”

In 2011, Smith returned to Cool Lawn Dairy and began managing their 150-cow grazing dairy. In 2015, with efficiency in mind, the family decided to consolidate their herds and build a new free-stall barn.

Ken Smith said his son, Ben, did a lot in his first year back, like expanding the heifer barn and switching to bulk products that helped save the dairy money.

Patrick Comyn, DVM with Virginia Herd Health Management Services, who nominated Smith for the award, said Ben was instrumental in the decision to install a collar-based herd monitoring system to assist with heat detection and rumination.

“Smith also oversaw the building of a 50-cow rotary parlor last year that shortened the time cows waited to be milked from 1.75 hours per milking group to about 45 minutes per milking group,” he said. “This has helped reduce cow foot issues and decreased somatic cell count.”

Comyn also shares that Smith has good communication with his staff and seeks employee consensus when planning the dairy’s future. Half of Cool Lawn’s employees have been employed at the farm for 10 to 20 years.

“This gives continuity and a sense of pride on the farm,” Comyn says. “It was a testament to the employees’ confidence in Ben that they stayed on in the transition from Ken to Ben.”

Tearful, Ken is beyond proud of his son’s ability to grow and evolve the family’s dairy heritage.

“He did a lot in his first year back,” Ken proudly says. “I’ve become so proud of this young man.”

For Ben, who is now in the driver’s seat, his number one goal is to continue the legacy that generations before him worked so tirelessly at.

“Our philosophy is if you’re not growing, you’re going backward,” he says, noting that growth can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.

The future of Cool Lawn is one of expansion and innovation, but Smith says he plans to take it one step at a time.

Leader in Technology winner

The 2023 Milk Business Leader in Technology award winner shares that incorporating technology into his role as a herd manager has been a game changer that has upped the overall efficiency at Wisconsin’s largest family-owned dairy.

Chris Szydel of Kewaunee, Wis., joined Pagel’s Ponderosa as a nighttime milking technician in 1995. A decade later, he was promoted to herd manager and now manages both the Pagel Ponderosa and Hilltop Farm dairies, overseeing three different parlors and 65 employees.

“We doubled in one year, making for a big learning curve. Essentially, everything that was running so smoothly daily for 1,000 cows had to be converted to a 3,000-cow dairy with a whole new site and setup and going from one parlor to two parlors,” he says. “It was a big transition with a big learning curve.”

Jeannie Bishop with Merck Animal Health, who nominated Szydel for the award, said Szydel has been an extreme innovator and implementer of technology.

“There are no limits in his world when it comes to technology and pushing it further ahead and becoming better suited to their needs at Pagel’s Ponderosa,” she said.

Szydel led the efforts to reduce lock-up times to 4 -5 hours per week by installing Parlor Boss and SenseHub (formerly known as SCR) that work together in their rotary.

“All the tasks we need to take care of for the cows show up on the screen. The cows are being taken care of without disrupting them, it is a low-stress environment,” he says.

A true testament to legacy living on, Don Niles, DVM, head of dairy operations for the Pagel Family Business, says he still sees a little bit of John Pagel (the matriarch of the Pagel operation, who passed away in 2018) in the day-to-day operations of the dairy.

Szydel shares that John Pagel taught him to put the cows first.

“It’s all about providing the best care to the cows,” Szydel says.

Additional cost-effective technology that Szydel helped implement in the Pagel Family Business includes the Pulse NeedleFree System - a disposable needle-free injector - and Cattle-Care - a dairy management software that uses existing parlor cameras and artificial intelligence to generate automated protocol reports. Szydel shares both have proven a great return on investment, minimizing lock-up times and generating better consistencies of the protocols.

“Our dad and grandfather were very aggressive with using technology,” J.J. Pagel, CEO of Pagel Family Business, says, adding that Szydel has carried that legacy on by being ‘all in’ when it comes to researching and implementing technology in the operations.

Szydel shares that John told him, “When we focus on something, just do it right. Mistakes will happen but we must learn from them.”

Employee Excellence winner

The 2023 Milk Business Employee of Excellence award winner came to America as a 15-year-old boy with his family. One of eight kids, Laurenio Vitorino came to the U.S. from Portugal and went straight to high school. When money got tight for his family, he went to work on a central California dairy farm and quickly found his calling.

Now, 32 years later, Vitorino is still employed by the same family dairy he started with, although his job responsibilities have grown considerably. Starting as a relief milker, today he serves as the general manager of Countyline LLC in Hilmar. In this role, he oversees the day-to-day operations of the dairy unit as well as having the farming operations team report to him.

Vance Ahlem, owner of Countyline LLC, shares that Vitorino has been extremely humble in his successes while striving to learn more and make things better for cows and staff each step of the way.

“Having started at the bottom of the organization and working his way up has given him great insight into each and every job in the business while giving him the ability to understand what he is asking others to do,” Ahlem says. “This has also allowed him to make improvements at each position based on his experience.”

Vitorino’s most recent leadership project at the dairy was overseeing the conversion of Countyline’s milking herd from conventional to robotic. In this role he worked closely with Lely North America and TDR Inc.; learning the recommended steps needed for training and starting robot operations.

Ahlem shares that if he didn’t have Vitorino’s buy-in, their family would never have switched to robots. After starting the first set of robots, Vitorino was able to streamline the process to reduce and eliminate the need for outside labor during start up as well as reworking some of the gating to provide a safer experience for both cows and staff.

“He put his heart and soul into this process and made every startup better,” Ahlem says. “When he thinks about startups, he thinks about how we can be easy on the cows.”

Understandably, Vitorino is considered family to the Ahlem family.

“He treats this facility as if he owns it and he is always there for us,” Ahlem says.

Nell Moore, DVM with Mid Valley Large Animal Service, says Vitorino has the unique ability to have really high standards while also gaining respect, keeping things fun and motivating others.

Vitorino is humbled to receive this award, but says it comes from teamwork. His advice to other farm managers is to lean on communication. He is thankful for the opportunities he has had to learn and succeed. One way he plans to help drive Countyline forward is by providing the same opportunities to his employees.

While success can come in many shapes and sizes, our three award winners illustrate that once a person finds their passion, they not only find their purpose, they also find success.

Grant Available to Help Iowa Dairy Farmers Purchase New Technology, Like Robots

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 16:00:00 GMT

The lack of labor availability is driving many dairy producers to consider implementing new technology, such as robots to milk the cows or cow sensors to manage their reproduction.

Mariah Busta, executive director of the Iowa Dairy Association, says they are excited for the launch of the Dairy Innovation Grant Program, which has been created to increase on-farm dairy processing, reduce farm labor costs, and expand the availability of Iowa dairy products for consumers.

“It is an initiative our organization worked hard on and are pleased to see it come to fruition with the Iowa Department of Agriculture & Land Stewardship,” she said. “The grant program will support Iowa’s dairy farms by addressing the need for innovation - whether through dairy processing or implementing labor-reducing technologies on the farm - plus, give Iowa consumers additional options to support local dairy. We appreciate the investment by Governor Reynolds and Iowa’s legislators in our dairy industry.”

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Naig, said Iowa consumers will ultimately benefit from the availability of more Iowa-made and locally produced dairy products by helping Iowa dairy farms cost-share the addition of new on-farm processing equipment or labor-saving technology through Choose Iowa Dairy Innovation Grant Program.

“We are excited to identify the most innovative and creative dairy projects through this program, which we know will create new markets for farmers, more choices for consumers, and additional economic activity in our rural communities,” Secretary Naig said.

The grant program, which was authorized during the 2023 legislative session and is administered by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, has an overall budget of $750,000 for the first year. With the legislative intent of assisting smaller dairies and farmers, the highly competitive program will match up to $100,000 per project.

The cost-share grants could, for example, help dairies invest in pasteurization equipment, processing vats, packaging and labeling products, robots, health monitoring, automated feeding systems or cleaning assistance. The program funds are not eligible to cover start-up costs, advertising, public relations, salary/benefits/wages, existing debt or any expenses incurred before awarding the grant.

Successful applicants must be located in Iowa, have fewer than 50 employees, and be in good standing with pertinent regulatory agencies. Only dairies permitted and inspected by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship are eligible. Full details about the cost-share grant program, including financial matching requirements, application, eligibility and scoring are available on the Choose Iowa website .

Applications should be submitted through the online portal on the Choose Iowa website and are due by 12:00 p.m. on Friday, February 9, 2024. Grant recipients will be announced in March 2024. email Questions to chooseiowagrant@iowaagriculture.gov .

Pagel’s Herd Manager Shares How Tech Upped Wisconsin’s Largest Family-Owned Dairy Farm’s Game

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 16:10:40 GMT

Technology and efficiency seem to go hand in hand. This is what Chris Szydel of Kewaunee, Wis. says, as he shares how incorporating technology into his role as herd manager has been a game changer that has upped the overall efficiency at Wisconsin’s largest family-owned dairy.

“It is just like a light switch,” he notes, sharing that he first performed his role with a clipboard and reports printed off of DairyComp and manually doing everything.

Szydel joined Pagel’s Ponderosa as a nighttime milking technician in 1995. A decade later, he was promoted to herd manager and now manages both the Pagel Ponderosa and Hilltop Farm dairies, overseeing three different parlors and 65 employees. His role has evolved tenfold.

“We doubled in one year, making for a big learning curve. Essentially, everything that was running so smoothly on a daily basis for 1,000 cows had to be converted to a 3,000-cow dairy with a whole new site and setup and going from one parlor to two parlors,” he says. “It was a big transition with a big learning curve. John Pagel told me, when the potatoes start falling off the plates, you got to put them back carefully.”

Cadillac System

“My best analogy is going from a horse and buggy to getting into a new Cadillac,” he explains.

The Cadillac systems that Szydel is referring to is the ParlorBoss and SenseHub (formerly SCR) working together in their rotary, which allows Szydel and his team to now perform herd management tasks while cows are milking, reducing lockup times.

“We went from 5-6 hours a day on headlock time for the herd to 4 -5 hours per week lock up time,” he says sharing the SenseHub system pulls data from the cows collars, forwards it to DairyComp that then will relay it to the ParlorBoss screen. “All the tasks we need to take care of for the cows show up on the screen. The cows are being taken care of without disrupting them, it is a low stress environment.”

Szydel shares that SenseHub has also significantly helped them reduce antibiotic and hormone cost on the dairies.

“It does a great job of identifying cows early and we can give them attention sooner. With this technology, we can better identify the animals and have the compliance to double check to make sure that the cow got the attention that she needed,” he adds.

Conducting all their vaccinations and hormone medicine on the rotary, Szydel explains if a cow needs more attention, they can use sort gates to separate her for an exam.

“Everybody else can then go from the parlor back to the pen,” he says, explaining even on small breeding days, they can sort off cows into a small pen and breed and not disrupt the whole group of cows. “The cows are more comfortable in the pens after milking. The sort gates also allow us to breed cow 2x a day, separating the ones we need. We can breed the cow within 5 to 10 minutes and then open up the gate and allow her right back into traffic.”

Investing in technology like DairyBoss and SenseHub has also changed the workload amongst all Pagel’s employees.

“My biggest challenge over the last year and a half with the sort gates, ParlorBoss and SenseHub is keeping my team productive. We have saved time with this technology, so I have had to restructure what we’re doing,” he says.

Dialing in on efficiency across the entire dairy, Szydel and his team have taken on maintenance work during their downtime.

“We’re doing things with our team to help out other departments to help fill the gap,” he says. “We don’t want to let anybody go because the farms are expanding, and we have great people. We are just restructuring a bit.”

Cool Cow Boost

Turning fans on and rolling curtains up used to occupy a lot of time for Szydel. He shares that incorporating a temperature control system in the barns and parlor was a huge time saver, as well as a boost for production.

“I can control the temps in the parlor and the holding area from my cell phone or laptop and this gives the cows the best environment,” he says.

Szydel shares that the herd’s production hovers around 90-92 lbs. of fluid, 106 lbs. energy corrected.

“We would drop probably 8 to 10 lbs. of milk in the summer because of the warm weather,” he states, sharing repro also saw a boost.

“Our pregnancy rate is holding between 37 and 39% and we are able to not only get cows pregnant, but keep them pregnant, too,” he adds.

Worth the Investment

Additional cost-effective technology that Szydel says has been worth the investment includes:

Pulse NeedleFree System is a lightweight, disposable needle-free injector. “We want to make sure that we don’t have the blood-borne pathogens switching from cow to cow and it takes a lot of time and effort to switch needles,” he says. “Headlocks are no longer needed for routine management treatments.”
Cattle-Care is a dairy management software that uses existing parlor cameras and artificial intelligence to generate automated protocol reports. “We can reduce deviation in our protocols and having this technology lets us know the consistencies of the protocols and our shifts.”

Five Most Used Apps

Szydel says his role as herd manager has him in front of a computer 50% of the time. He shares his four most used apps include:

Valley Ag Software
DairyBoss
Teams Folders
Cattle Care camera system
SenseHub (formerly SCR)

Szydel points out their Cainthus system monitors the feed that is in front of the pre-fresh cows, making sure bunks are full, as a dairy technology must have.

“If we get some areas where the cows are eating more, or eating less, we can talk to our feeders and have them drop more or less feed in those areas,” he says. “It also sends alerts to the feeder’s phones if the cows look to run out of feed, letting them know to feed this group first.”

With so much technology to choose from, Szydel says ultimately what he is selecting for is cost-effective technology that will improve the overall efficiency of the dairy.

“Otherwise, all this technology adds up, so we got to make sure that we’re spending the money in the right areas and that we can get the results from it,” he says.

Leaning into the Future: Producers Share How Technology Enriches Their Operations

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 17:03:23 GMT

Over the years, dairy producers have continued to dial in on productivity and profitability. In turn, they have also leaned into technology to help them achieve these goals. Ranging from robotic milking, RFID identification and monitoring systems, technology has helped advance agricultural productivity.

Recently on a Farm Journal Milk Business webinar, three dairy producers shared what technologies they currently have invested in and additional technologies that they are looking at to help push their operations forward.

Milk Source, Wisconsin

Chema Ortiz, a herd management specialist for Milk Source in Wisconsin, says that like most of the industry, they too have been challenged with labor shortages over the last few years.

“The way we did things five years ago is definitely different now,” he says. “And, it’s going to be different five years from now too. We try to get better, more efficient and also improve some of our health and reproduction.”

Intending to reduce labor, Ortiz says one of the ways Milk Source has been able to do that is by adding sprayers in their parlors, as well as utilizing activity collars on some of their dairies. Today, Milk Source is home to 35,000 cows across five locations located in three different states.

McCarty Family Farms, Kansas

Ken McCarty with McCarty Family Farms in Kansas has recently installed the first of two DeLaval rotaries that include a whole host of technologies.

“Some of the advantages that we see with that system are obvious, it’s a much more labor-efficient way of milking cows; easier on the cow and easier on the human,” he says. “But we’ve also installed post dip robots that have eliminated a little bit of labor from the wheel while maintaining basically the same level of application.”

Additionally, McCarty’s also feels like cow activity monitoring systems are making an impact for their dairies located in Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio.

“The Delpro system tracks daily weights, animal activity… all those sorts of things. We’re still learning, but we are diving into the insights to better understand how we can optimize our system as a whole to drive productivity and profitability,” he says.

Four J Jerseys, California

Out west in California, Ryan Junio with Four J Jerseys in Pixley says his biggest focus has been on calf rearing and improving calf health before outsourcing them to a custom calf ranch.

“We’ve taken on new pasteurization processes and colostrum freezing processes trying to mitigate any disease,” he says. “We’re also in the midst of looking at installing pre and post-dip sprayers trying to reduce labor and trying to become more efficient on the dairy in that way.”

Junio, who milks 5,000 Jerseys and farms 12,000 acres in Tulare County, shares that they are also in the process of incorporating a monitoring system to help manage herd health and dial in on reproduction efficiencies.

“We don’t have a system online yet,” he says. “We plan to become more efficient in terms of labor and in terms of repro hormones. We think that the payback there is immense. So that’s something we’re aggressively trying to get online right now.”

The Next 24 Months

Technology is also the focus for these three producers in the next 24 months. Junio says they plan on bringing the cow monitoring system on board and want to dial in on efficiencies across the whole herd, especially with herd health.

“The sprayers in the carousel are going to be able to reduce labor,” he says. “We’re trying to ramp up efficiencies in the carousel and [milk] a few more cows 3x versus 2x. We’re looking at a DeLaval system that incorporates a second vacuum line, that will enable us to ramp up the vacuum, too.”

New to utilizing activity collars, Ortiz says that those at Milk Source are trying to learn the program the best they can as a trial. The team is also working to better incorporate sort gates.

“I see [this technology] as part of the plan in the future for other sites,” he says. “What we are seeing from the beginning looks promising.”

Additionally, Milk Source is in a trial with an artificial intelligence company working with cameras.

“As that technology gets better, it’s definitely something that we’re going to try and utilize the best we can,” Ortiz shares. He outlines that from their point of view, an investment in technology must either reduce labor or improve cow health and reproduction.

The standards that dairies hold themselves continue to get higher and higher and that is certainly the case for McCarty, who shares that they are looking at investing in additional robotics on their farms.

“Anything that we can do that standardizes practices on the farm, drives down labor costs and can benefit the welfare of our team members is worth pursuing,” he says. He adds that the primary focus right now is on robotics and autonomous tractors.

To hear these three producers talk more about technology and how it is playing a big role on their farms, watch the entire webinar here: https://fjwebinars.com/account/register/dairy-herd-management/167

Facial Recognition for Cows Is Latest Cargill-Backed Tech Idea

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:49:14 GMT

(Bloomberg) -- Cargill Inc. is backing an Irish startup that uses facial recognition software to help increase the productivity of dairy cows, the latest move by the largest closely held U.S. company to bolster its agricultural-technology efforts.

Cargill has taken a minority stake in Cainthus, which harnesses machine-learning and imaging techniques to identify cows and glean information on everything from their behavior to appetite, David Hunt, president and co-founder of Cainthus, said in a telephone interview Wednesday. Details of the investment weren’t disclosed.

Hunt said Dublin-based Cainthus chose Cargill over venture capital firms because of the U.S. company’s footprint in agriculture. Cargill is still owned by the same family that founded it 153 years ago and it’s one of the world’s largest crop traders and meat producers.

In the last few years, Minneapolis-based Cargill has reorganized parts of its business and built up a stronger presence in farm technology. It announced last month it’s partnering with other companies to form a startup accelerator that will identify new food technologies. Cargill is seeking breakthroughs from other industries that can be applied to meet the big challenges in agriculture, such as population growth, labor shortages in rural areas, and consumers’ concern over how their food is sourced and treated.

It’s a question of “how do you do some of the same activities” but “in a more efficient manner,” SriRaj Kantamneni, managing director of its digital insights business, said in an interview.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.