This dairy producer chose ear sensors over collars

Maassen Dairy

Maassen Dairy is located in Morris, Iowa. This five generation old dairy farm milks 1,800 Holstein cows and has four owners: Lee Maassen and his sons Aaron, Stefan and Adam. Alongside the owners, the dairy farm has 25 employees.

Stefan explains how he liked the user friendliness of the system and to put in the ear sensors. It makes working with the cow monitoring system quick and efficient. “It’s really easy to put in the sensors or to link or de-link new cows or new heifers. If there’s a cow that needs one right away, you just quickly grab it and link it right to your phone. It’s really user friendly, you don’t have to take the numbers back to your office and put them in the system later. It’s just quick and efficient.”

Better Heat Detection

Especially the way heat detection is done at the dairy farm has changed since CowManager. Adam tells about how he would watch from the feed truck for cows in heat; obviously this didn’t work perfectly. Now they never miss a heat and know exactly when to breed, which maximizes pregnancy rates. He says: “Now I’ve been surprised that you go in the freestyle barn and they’re laying down, they’re in a perfect heat and they can be bred. So I know that we’re catching more in heat on their natural heat than what we were before.”

However, the biggest benefit they experience at Maassen Dairy is having a set of eyes on every single cow 24 hours a day, every day of the week. Aaron says they trust the monitoring, they spend their time on the animals that need it according to the system and know that the rest of herd is doing okay and don’t need intervention. Walking through the barn for hours is no longer necessary.

Never Going Back

Lee describes himself as a dollar and cents guy, since it was quite an investment he was kind of skeptical at first and doubted whether it was going to pay for itself or not. But it turned out to be a great investment. In his words; “I can’t say enough for as much skeptical as I was going into it, you know. I’d sell it to anybody today. It’s just staying on top of it, one step better than what we could do before.”

All four men are very glad with the value they get out of the system despite the investment, even surprised. They can care for their herd better. It takes out the guesswork on both the reproduction and health side.

“We asked a lot of questions to different people that have used CowManager and said: Hey, let’s go for it. Never looked back, thinking it’s been a great return on investment. I don’t know how I’d ever go back. It’s proven itself very well, so I’d recommend it to anybody.”