As more and more technologies are introduced to the dairy industry, researchers, allied industry and producers are learning whether or not they are a good fit. The first-ever U.S. Precision Dairy Conference and Expo served as a meeting place to discuss many of these new technologies. Here are highlights from the conference held recently in Rochester, Minnesota.
Technology shift
Jeffrey Bewley, a researcher of precision dairy technologies at the University of Kentucky, said we’re within a technological transformation in the industry. Today’s technologies provide the opportunity to watch every animal 24 hours a day.
“We’re just at the beginning of this,” Bewley said. He also cautioned producers to set realistic expectations and to realize that, while helpful, these technologies won’t change cows or people.
Precision dairy technologies do not eliminate the basic principles of farming, Albert DeVries of the University of Florida echoed. Providing good cow comfort, nutrition and care are still core functions to a dairy.
According to DeVries, precision technologies will be most successful at well-managed farms, for producers with an interest in technology and cows, in situations where they are profitable and where there is customer service to support them.
Precision technologies need to be used as a predictor of action on a farm. If actions result based on the data from the technology, it is easier to determine how to cash-flow the investment.
One farm that has been an early adopter of new technologies, including precision dairy technologies, is Mason Dixon Farms in Pennsylvania. Owner Doyle Waybright said he likes to “Be bold and try new things; dare to succeed or even dare to fail.”
Waybright admitted trying new things can result in failure, but he hasn’t let that stop him.
“The use of cutting-edge technologies can be profitable,” Waybright said, adding, “It takes patience and perseverance to be successful.”
Precision feeding
Alex Bach from IRTA, a research institute owned by the government of Catalonia in Spain, noted feed costs are 53 percent of total investment to improve milk production, whereas miscellaneous items like breeding and mastitis amount to only 4.9 percent of the total cost. “Big improvements in miscellaneous will have a smaller impact on a dairy’s finances,” Bach said.
Feed costs have more than doubled in the last 10 years, yet producers continue to look at days in milk, days open, etc., mostly because that information is easy to find.
For many years, dairy producers operated under the philosophy of more milk, more money. “Current feed prices and feed availability may render this strategy inadequate,” he said.
“What really makes a dairy herd profitable and sustainable is the efficient conversion of natural resources into milk,” Bach continued.
Feed efficiency is the bottom line of a dairy herd. It can be affected by days in milk, parity, health, environment and genetics. Therefore, a single TMR for a group of cows is not the best way to maximize the efficiencies of each individual cow.
Bach has been experimenting with a prototype feed system for the past year. When a cow enters the rotary parlor, its information is sent to the “cook.” The computer knows the specific recipe this cow should receive, and one to six ingredients are pulled and mixed in a central tank then fed out to the cow in the parlor.
This allows for a relatively inexpensive TMR be fed to all cows. Those cows needing more nutrients and having the ability to “pay” for them will receive them on an individual basis during milking.
Bach estimated a $200,000 investment for the unit but figures he can achieve payback within a year.
Keith Sather with Supervisor Systems shared another way to decrease feed costs. Using feed management software systems can improve the accuracy of the human factor in feeding systems by serving as a tool to monitor and train those responsible for feeding the herd.
Automatic milking systems
Jack Rodenburg, a dairy consultant with DairyLogix in Ontario, Canada, said two key factors define success with robotic milking.
The first is lifestyle. Automatic milking systems offer more flexibility in terms of working hours, less physically demanding work, the opportunity to do more with family labor, less dependence on hired labor and a safer work environment with less large equipment and fewer cows to move.
Unfortunately, “you can’t pay for it that way,” Rodenburg said. Therefore, the other factor has to be profitability.
To calculate profitability, it could be compared to parlor milking in terms of cost of capital, cost of labor, milking labor efficiency, etc.
Data on profitability and labor saving can be hard to collect. It is common to use milk per robot, milk production per cow, milking frequency per cow and number of fetch cows to measure success of an automated milking system.
There are a number of areas on the farm that can impact these measurements of success, including stocking rate, the cows, the ration and traffic flow.
The University of Minnesota has been studying barn design and animal welfare in automatic milking systems. It has 52 farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin enrolled in the study.
Jim Salfer with the University of Minnesota said 32 of the farms are new freestall barns, 23 are retrofit into an existing barn and five have access to pasture.
The average was 2.6 robots per farm and 1.4 robots per pen.
Most of the farms (40) used a free-flow traffic system, and 12 farms had guided flow.
In the guided-flow operations, nine of the farms had the cows move from stall to milking to feed, as opposed to feed before milking. There was also a preference towards finger gates versus saloon gates for cows to pass through.
Most farms preferred automation in manure management systems, with 50 percent of the farms using an automatic scraper. Eleven percent used a slatted floor and 28 percent scraped with a skid loader, which was more prevalent in a retrofit operation.
Lying surfaces included 44 percent mattresses, 27 percent sand, 14 percent waterbeds, 10 percent mattress and pasture and 6 percent bedded pack.
When compared to other Midwest studies, there was higher lameness prevalence in robotic facilities. Salfer said this could be due to reduced footbath use on these operations.
Sensors
Ilan Halachmi from Agricultural Research Organization in Israel is working on three projects looking at how sensors can support a producer’s decision-making process.
Overall, Halachmi said when using sensors producers need to be looking at the right key indicators, analyzing data per cow, incorporating individual cow history, processing data and managing concerns.
“The decision is the aim,” he said, noting if it doesn’t aid in making a decision, you’re just accumulating data.
An activity monitor is helping Tom Gavin of Gav-N-View Farm in Lansing, Iowa, make breeding decisions.
By relying on data from the system to know when to breed cows, the farm’s pregnancy rate has increased from 17 percent to 26 percent, days open dropped from 142 to 116, and days in milk decreased from 180 to 164.
Using pedometers and milk meters, Jena Betley of Betley Farms LLC in Pulaski, Wisconsin, uses milk data and reproduction reports to make daily decisions on the farm.
She can analyze breeding by looking at which bulls are getting cows pregnant and which inseminators are doing well.
Milk data helps her monitor the milking procedure and animal handling.
She’s also involved in a study to see if pedometers can help predict a lame cow. Betley said her hoof trimmer has asked if he can stop doing maintenance trims because the system is finding all of the cows that are going lame. PD
Karen Lee
Editor
Progressive Dairyman
