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Santiam Dairy
United States
“These little tags have really changed the way we do business!” Drew Johnson – Santiam Dairy, United States
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Paulus Dairy
United States
Testimonial Paulus Dairy LLC, 1,550 cows, Fredonia Wisconsin, United States.
“I would like to think that we are good herdsmen and we
do know our cows but it still does beat us to the punch with cows. It’ll pay for itself. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.”
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Michael Johnson
United States
Podcast Trailside Holsteins, United StatesHow dairyman Michael Johnson has integrated eartag activity monitoring. Minnesota dairyman Michael Johnson has been using eartag activity monitoring from CowManager for four and a half years. In this episode, he talks about his experience installing the technology, his results and advice for other dairymen who may be considering similar technology. Johnson operates Trailside Holsteins in Fountain, Minnesota, and milks 600-cows.
Podcast by Walt Cooley, Editor Progressive Dairy. Full article,
Page 34, Progressive Dairy.
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World Dairy Expo 2019, Virtual Farm Tour
United States
Hosted by: Paulus Dairy LLC, Fredonia, Wis. Owned by Mike and Lori Paulus, their son Andy and daughter, Tiffany Schneider.
Highlights: 1,550 milking/Managing for Sustainability
Sponsored by CowManager & Select Sires Inc.
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Jan van Vliet
United States
A little over 12 months ago, Jan Van Vliet tried CowManager through the Seeing is Believing trial. Initially putting CowManager ear tag sensors on 50 cows, Jan saw the benefits of the electronic herd health monitoring system right away.
“Before CowManager we spent a lot of time every day in the fresh pen looking at all the cows. With CowManager we now go directly to the cows that need our attention, instead of rolling through the entire group. CowManager lets us be more proactive and head off problems before cows get really sick,” said Jan.
“When we receive an alert that a cow is not “acting” normally we drench her right away. Previously we would not have seen cows like this begin to struggle because there are no outward signs. With CowManager it’s identified early, and we are able to fight off illness and keep them producing. You can find sick cows without CowManager, but it’s not as easy, and it’s usually too late. Our recovery rate from sickness is higher, and our culling rate is down because of CowManager."
"CowManager makes us more efficient and saves us time. It has reduced our labor needs for monitoring fresh cows, which allows us to do other things on the farm. We believe CowManager has already paid for itself. We only wish we had installed it sooner.” - Jan Van Vliet, Van Vliet Dairy
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Marcus Hollmann
United States
Marcus Hollmann, nutritionist and consultant for Summit Farms (Wisconsin, USA) about the Nutrition module: “I really like the outstanding graphs. They capture not only the snapshot of the herd today, but also let me view changes over time very quickly, comparing eating and rumination times. CowManager is a tool in our toolbox to respond quickly, finetune the cows’ diet and essentially make the dairy more profitable.”
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Dutch Dairy LLC
United States
Sander & Amy Pentermann (Dutch Dairy LLC) share how they get to spend more time with their kids by using CowManager at their dairy farm.
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Family Farming
United States
Michael Johnson, Trailside Holsteins says: "I can attend my kid’s events or go on vacation and not be full of worry."
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United Vision Dairy
United States
"When you figure out the investment, it's a cheap employee that monitors every cow 24/7. It allows me to walk in, look at my monitor, know which cows are in trouble and get them taken care off." Watch Steve Yaeger's (Manager at United Vision Dairy) story.
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Wayside Dairy, WI, USA
United States
Jeremy Natzke is co-owner of Wayside Dairy in Greenleaf, WI, USA. They have 2300 cows, all with the CowManager ear sensor, in total.
“When the system was installed, we saw immediate value. Two years ago we sat at a 33% preg rate and ever since we’re on CowManager we’re at 38% for the year and we’re still climbing”
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Clayview Dairy, MN, USA
United States
Maricarmen and Norberto are the operations manager and herdmanager of Clayview Dairy, WI, USA. The dairy has 1.400 cows.
Maricarmen:
“CowManager has helped me in learning more about the life span of a dairy cow. Having no veterinarian experience about the behavior of an animal. I can understand their behavioral pattern better, such as eating time. Therefore I feel I can contribute more to the decision making as it makes it much easier for us to be able to make decisions without having any regrets in the future.”
Cor Veldhuisen
Netherlands
Melkveehouder Cor Veldhuisen runt samen met zijn vrouw en zoon een melkveebedrijf met 130 melkkoeien in Nigtevecht (Utrecht): “We hebben nu CowManager twee jaar. We hebben voor CowManager gekozen omdat we het idee hadden dat met name door de temperatuurmeting via het oor de beste manier is om te kunnen monitoren of een koe gezond is. Vroeger pakte je ook zelf het oor van een koe beet om te voelen of die koud of warm was”.
Ook zijn zoon, Jaco Veldhuisen, is enthousiast over de mogelijkheden van CowManager en de verbeteringen die op het bedrijf te zien zijn: “Ik kijk regelmatig op mijn app van hoe het zit en welke koeien tochtig zijn of welke een gezondheidsmelding hebben. Er zijn geen koeien meer die je mist”.
Op het bedrijf worden de koeien door Cor Veldhuisen zelf geïnsemineerd, aan de hand van de tochtmeldingen van CowManager. Op de applicatie van CowManager is te zien hoelang een koe al tochtig is, op die manier kun je het optimale inseminatietijdstip bepalen. Dit heeft ook effect op de tussenkalftijd verteld Cor Veldhuisen: “Ik ben van 430 dagen tussenkalftijd gezakt naar 390. Dat is helemaal toe te schrijven aan sensoren”.
CowManager geeft niet alleen tochtmeldingen maar ook gezondheidsmeldingen. Dit ervaarde Cor Veldhuisen afgelopen zomer, toen er van kuil veranderd moest worden. Van de een op de andere dag ontving hij allemaal gezondheidsmeldingen en bleken alle koeien last te hebben van pensverzuring: “Het eerste wat je dan doet als je dat ziet, is gelijk hooi voeren. Ik denk zeker, door sensoren, dat we er op tijd bij waren”.
Cor Veldhuisen is zeer te spreken over CowManager en de service: “Als er wat aan hand is met een kapotte sensor, je meldt het en je krijgt een nieuwe toegestuurd. In ons geval werkt het en ik denk dat we het snel terugverdiend hebben. En het is gewoon een stuk bedrijfsgemak”.
Santiam Dairy in Turner, Oregon, is home to 500 milking cows. The dairy is owned by Chris DeVries and managed by son-in-law Drew Johson. After only 7 months of using the CowManager system they already booked great results.
“I 
can’t believe how wonderful and easy it is working with these ear-tags. Going through our records, I noticed that our pregnancy rates went up, our death loss down and it saves us a couple of hours of working a day".
The CowManager ear tags monitor the activity, rumination and ear temperature of each cow. This accurate information about a cow’s performance is essential to success in dairy farming. The better you know how your animals feel, the better equipped you are to take the right action at the right time. Adequate intervention will result in higher pregnancy rates, improved lactation, a better health status, and fewer cow losses. CowManager’s revolutionary ear tag provides this information for each individual cow, and fully supports the needs of the dairyman. Resulting in a better performance and a lower work-load.
Before using CowManager, the results of the breeding program were just fine, according to Drew Johnson. However, to maintain the pregnancy rates they needed to use lots of medication. Checking on all the heifers used to be very time-consuming and being short on one man on the team didn’t help our ‘spare-time’ at all.
“In terms of saving time, we used to spend two hours every day chalking tails, watching for heats, and checking fresh cows, but we don’t do that anymore and we’re having better results!
The CowManager system combines data from the ear-tag with a special algorithm, that gives the dairyman accurate health alerts. These health alerts make sure that you can catch an ill cow early. Early detection of the sickness is key for adequate treatment with less and/or cheaper medication. And it can even prevent the milk-production from dropping. According to Drew Johnson, the health alerts from CowManager saved him $8.000 only in medical costs.
“It also saved us time finding and treating cows that are truly sick. You wouldn’t believe how soon the tags pick up illness. Now we save time and $8.000 because we’re only treating cows that need it, and not treating those that don’t.”
“I can’t say enough good about the system! These little tags have really changed the way we do business!”
John and Meghan Palmer, the owners of Prairie Star Dairy, Waukon, Iowa milk 120 cows and have 400 acres of crop production along with 200 acres of pasture, with help from their five children. Their milking operation has been certified as organic for several years. In 2015, the Palmers moved into an impressive new free stall barn for improved cow comfort. In December 2016, the Palmer’s purchased a CowManager automated monitoring system with the Fertility and Health modules, which has provided the Palmers with Fertility alerts for cows in heat and Health alerts for cows that appear sick based on a reduction in activity, feeding time and rumination levels. They have SensOors on both cows and heifers.
During the long, cold upper-Midwest winter of 2017-2018, the Palmers were challenged with a spread of pneumonia in their milking cows, caused by the Pasteurella multocida bacteria, which is very contagious and deadly. A common term for this disease in cattle has been termed ‘Shipping Fever’. For the Palmer’s, the value of their investment in CowManager to provide early detection of the pneumonia symptoms was critical in them being able to get early detection of afflicted cows and treat them with organic-approved methods to help maintain their organic status. John Palmer told us that “Initially we had six cows in a sick pen and three of these died despite treatment with antibiotics, but we soon learned based on the data in CowManager, which cows were coming down with pneumonia and we managed to get the rest of the herd through this outbreak. For this issue, the temp alerts available with CowManager were also critical in the diagnosis of cows that needed treatment and was as important to us as the rumination data. Cows that were afflicted didn’t look sick but with a reduction in appetite, declining rumination and elevated temperatures, the CowManager system would flag these cows with a sick alert, which was very helpful.”
Left to right: Faith Palmer, John Palmer and Meghan Palmer.
John also added that “at one time during this challenge, we had 16-17 cows that CowManager identified as being sick with the Health module alerts and using the data available with the system was critical to our ability to manage the treatment process. We only ended up with a few cows that we had to use antibiotics to save, which resulted in these cows having to be sold to a conventional dairy. Without the early alerts from CowManager, we would likely have decided to conventionally treat more cows than we needed to, and that saved us from having to cull a larger percentage of our herd, so having the CowManager system available during this health event was a huge benefit for us.”
Meghan commented on the ease of using the CowManager data; “The CowManager mobile app was very helpful when dealing with this challenge, as we could use it to continually monitor treated cows and look for new cows that showed up on the Health alert list. Once we figured out the pattern, we were able to look closely at the hourly data available for individual cows with the CowManager system to see if the treatment regime was working.”
Dr. David Gibbs is the veterinarian for Prairie Star Farm and had these comments about the value of CowManager to help manage this challenge: “CowManager was an incredibly helpful tool during a Pasteurella pneumonia outbreak at John and Meghan's dairy this past winter. The flagged sick cows would appear fine only to examine them and find 106-degree fevers and very early severe pneumonia. CowManager helped limit the herd damage by identifying sick cows before we could have by simply doing a walk through.”
When discussing their initial investment in CowManager, John said that “We initially purchased CowManager to improve heat detection with the Fertility module, which it has done well but for us the Health module has been a big benefit as well and this incident has made our investment in CowManager well worth it.” Mehgan also summed up their investment in CowManager by saying “CowManager is a great fit for Organic herds. We certainly are grateful for its function in helping us navigate through this situation, but we also love it for its effectiveness in monitoring fresh cows, cows off feed, and heats. CowManager is an invaluable tool to us and has proven its worth through daily use besides this unfortunate event.
John and Meghan Palmer – Prairie Star Dairy
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“These little tags have really changed the way we do business!” Drew Johnson – Santiam Dairy, United States
‘Monitoring 10,000 cows within a blink of an eye’
John and Meghan Palmer
“CowManager is an invaluable tool for our dairy”
Testimonial Paulus Dairy LLC, 1,550 cows, Fredonia Wisconsin, United States.
“I would like to think that we are good herdsmen and we
do know our cows but it still does beat us to the punch with cows. It’ll pay for itself. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.”
Podcast Trailside Holsteins, United StatesHow dairyman Michael Johnson has integrated eartag activity monitoring. Minnesota dairyman Michael Johnson has been using eartag activity monitoring from CowManager for four and a half years. In this episode, he talks about his experience installing the technology, his results and advice for other dairymen who may be considering similar technology. Johnson operates Trailside Holsteins in Fountain, Minnesota, and milks 600-cows.
Podcast by Walt Cooley, Editor Progressive Dairy. Full article,
Page 34, Progressive Dairy.
Hosted by: Paulus Dairy LLC, Fredonia, Wis. Owned by Mike and Lori Paulus, their son Andy and daughter, Tiffany Schneider.
Highlights: 1,550 milking/Managing for Sustainability
Sponsored by CowManager & Select Sires Inc.
Virtual Farm Tour of Paulus Dairy LLC, 1550 cows, Fredonia Wisconsin, United States. Owned by Mike and Lori Paulus, their son Andy and daughter, Tiffany Schneider.
One thing leads to another with activity monitoring at Benthem Brothers Dairy
A little over 12 months ago, Jan Van Vliet tried CowManager through the Seeing is Believing trial. Initially putting CowManager ear tag sensors on 50 cows, Jan saw the benefits of the electronic herd health monitoring system right away.
“Before CowManager we spent a lot of time every day in the fresh pen looking at all the cows. With CowManager we now go directly to the cows that need our attention, instead of rolling through the entire group. CowManager lets us be more proactive and head off problems before cows get really sick,” said Jan.
“When we receive an alert that a cow is not “acting” normally we drench her right away. Previously we would not have seen cows like this begin to struggle because there are no outward signs. With CowManager it’s identified early, and we are able to fight off illness and keep them producing. You can find sick cows without CowManager, but it’s not as easy, and it’s usually too late. Our recovery rate from sickness is higher, and our culling rate is down because of CowManager."
"CowManager makes us more efficient and saves us time. It has reduced our labor needs for monitoring fresh cows, which allows us to do other things on the farm. We believe CowManager has already paid for itself. We only wish we had installed it sooner.” - Jan Van Vliet, Van Vliet Dairy
Discover how the owners and staff at Summit Farms, Plymouth, Wisconsin, work with CowManager everyday.
Marcus Hollmann, nutritionist and consultant for Summit Farms (Wisconsin, USA) about the Nutrition module: “I really like the outstanding graphs. They capture not only the snapshot of the herd today, but also let me view changes over time very quickly, comparing eating and rumination times. CowManager is a tool in our toolbox to respond quickly, finetune the cows’ diet and essentially make the dairy more profitable.”
Sander & Amy Pentermann (Dutch Dairy LLC) share how they get to spend more time with their kids by using CowManager at their dairy farm.
Michael Johnson, Trailside Holsteins says: "I can attend my kid’s events or go on vacation and not be full of worry."
Virtual Farm Tour at Prairieland Dairy, Wisconsin.
"When you figure out the investment, it's a cheap employee that monitors every cow 24/7. It allows me to walk in, look at my monitor, know which cows are in trouble and get them taken care off." Watch Steve Yaeger's (Manager at United Vision Dairy) story.
Tiffany Schneider from Paulus Dairy (Wisconsin, USA) shares the results so far with CowManager at their 1500 cow dairy.
AI Specialist shares his experience of using CowManager
CowManager Specialist Scott Hecker shares the benefits of using CowManager at dairies.
Jeremy Natzke is co-owner of Wayside Dairy in Greenleaf, WI, USA. They have 2300 cows, all with the CowManager ear sensor, in total.
“When the system was installed, we saw immediate value. Two years ago we sat at a 33% preg rate and ever since we’re on CowManager we’re at 38% for the year and we’re still climbing”
Maricarmen and Norberto are the operations manager and herdmanager of Clayview Dairy, WI, USA. The dairy has 1.400 cows.
Maricarmen:
“CowManager has helped me in learning more about the life span of a dairy cow. Having no veterinarian experience about the behavior of an animal. I can understand their behavioral pattern better, such as eating time. Therefore I feel I can contribute more to the decision making as it makes it much easier for us to be able to make decisions without having any regrets in the future.”
Melkveehouder Cor Veldhuisen runt samen met zijn vrouw en zoon een melkveebedrijf met 130 melkkoeien in Nigtevecht (Utrecht): “We hebben nu CowManager twee jaar. We hebben voor CowManager gekozen omdat we het idee hadden dat met name door de temperatuurmeting via het oor de beste manier is om te kunnen monitoren of een koe gezond is. Vroeger pakte je ook zelf het oor van een koe beet om te voelen of die koud of warm was”.
Ook zijn zoon, Jaco Veldhuisen, is enthousiast over de mogelijkheden van CowManager en de verbeteringen die op het bedrijf te zien zijn: “Ik kijk regelmatig op mijn app van hoe het zit en welke koeien tochtig zijn of welke een gezondheidsmelding hebben. Er zijn geen koeien meer die je mist”.
Op het bedrijf worden de koeien door Cor Veldhuisen zelf geïnsemineerd, aan de hand van de tochtmeldingen van CowManager. Op de applicatie van CowManager is te zien hoelang een koe al tochtig is, op die manier kun je het optimale inseminatietijdstip bepalen. Dit heeft ook effect op de tussenkalftijd verteld Cor Veldhuisen: “Ik ben van 430 dagen tussenkalftijd gezakt naar 390. Dat is helemaal toe te schrijven aan sensoren”.
CowManager geeft niet alleen tochtmeldingen maar ook gezondheidsmeldingen. Dit ervaarde Cor Veldhuisen afgelopen zomer, toen er van kuil veranderd moest worden. Van de een op de andere dag ontving hij allemaal gezondheidsmeldingen en bleken alle koeien last te hebben van pensverzuring: “Het eerste wat je dan doet als je dat ziet, is gelijk hooi voeren. Ik denk zeker, door sensoren, dat we er op tijd bij waren”.
Cor Veldhuisen is zeer te spreken over CowManager en de service: “Als er wat aan hand is met een kapotte sensor, je meldt het en je krijgt een nieuwe toegestuurd. In ons geval werkt het en ik denk dat we het snel terugverdiend hebben. En het is gewoon een stuk bedrijfsgemak”.
Discover the values of CowManager for your dairy farm
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