Running Two Farms with Wearables: “It’s Remarkable Technology”

A World of Data in a Tiny Tag

For Patrick Oostveen, running a dairy operation without wearable technology nowadays just isn’t an option. It was high on his priority list when he took on a second farm.

“When we took this (farm) on, it was one of the first things to do: put a wearable in. Because I can’t be at two places at once, it’s impossible. To just really take the pressure off at those key times, like during mating.”

The choice for an ear tag was an easy one.

“I really like the ear tag concept – we’ve got it on the other farm as well. There’s no collars, no cows getting hung up on stuff, there’s no banging in the shed. It’s just easy to slam a tag in when you tag the heifers.”

Getting started was a piece of cake, he says. “Installation was a piece of cake, really. Like with the heifers; you’ve gotta tag the heifers. They’ve got a copper bullet at the same time, got the yellow tag as well. And then we just put in the CowManager in.”

They haven’t looked back since. The whole team relies on the ear tag system every day. “It’s different. It’s just remarkable they can fit a collar-worth of technology into something this tiny. It’s innovative, and it works.”

One Step Ahead of Health Issues

Patrick and his team have a fixed way of working, greatly depending on what the system tells them.

“From day to day, I get up for milking in the morning and have a flick through the app, see if anything has come up over the night. We have some drafts scheduled for the team to investigate, check on sick cows and if they’ve got a procedure to follow through. We check for mastitis, does she look good, maybe give a bolus, what category of sickness they are.”

They monitor the health, fertility, nutrition and transition period of the herd with CowManager. Which, according to Patrick, is very simple to do.

“You look up a graph of when a cow calves; what was her rumination before and after? Way easy to see with CowManager. And just the sensitivity of the health alerts. Normally, with the temperature alert or a very sick cow alert, there will be something going on.”

He’s particularly pleased with the Health Module. Not only does the module monitor activity, eating and rumination time, it also monitors ear temperature. Which makes all the difference.

“It’s just really remarkable technology. From ear movements they know like all the chewing and that sort of stuff. When a cow is sick and the system alerts you, you’re like ‘what’s going on’. Picking up those temperature alerts if she’s got a bad case of mastitis or something metabolic – the ear blood flow changes. If that happens, I know she’s crook.”

Saying Goodbye to Old Habits

“Initially I thought I would do the tail painting as well,” Patrick says. “But then I thought if you do it, you just have to trust the process and make sure you do your checks and stuff, and go full in.”

Tail painting is something of the past now, as is being stressed all the time about being at two places at once – which is impossible. Thanks to the system, Patrick and his team can keep an eye on both farms and the entire herd, wherever and whenever.

“If we didn’t have the cow wearables, we’d have to be at two places at once, which isn’t possible. Another option would be if I pick up cows from one shed in the morning and the other one at night. So I’d just be in the shed all day. I’ve got a couple of kids now too, so got all the family stuff to do. It frees you up.”