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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!”

"Werken met CowManager is eenvoudig en gebruiksvriendelijk"

Dick and Hetty Laan give their young stock a Sensor at 13.5 months which remains in their ears. At 14 months, they start breeding the heifers. At the moment, they have 250 Sensors in use.

The most important aspect of the system for Dick and Hetty Laan is the Fertility module. "It is nice to have an extra eye on our farm, because of the company size and the amount of work on the field. It’s a practical tool. The results have strongly improved after we started using CowManager. We noticed that some cows are only in heat during the night, we wouldn’t be able to see those without CowManager.

The dairy farmers are also very pleased with the module Health. "It is striking that CowManager indicates cows with health issues so fast. Due to the module Health we can also see an increase in activity half a day before calving.” Beside the activity before calving the they can react faster at sick alerts: “Once we had a sick alert with a temperature notification of a lame cow. Nothing was wrong with this cow during the morning milking, but at the time of the sick alert she was lying in a cubicle fully emaciated. At such a moment it is good to have something pointing that out, so you can act directly.” The module Nutrition is a great practical addition within the CowManager system. "You can see immediately whether the composition of the ration is good or not. This makes it possible to detect deviations in the ration very quickly, because the system shows the feed-factor of the whole herd. It’s nice that we instantly get a notification from cows who don’t eat and/or ruminate enough." "Our daily routine using the system is actually mainly just looking on the CowManager phone app during the breaks.”

Dick and Hetty Laan, Nederland

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

De familie Tibke heeft een melkveebedrijf met 190 koeien in Deinstedt (Nedersaksen). Begin maart, hebben Henry en zijn zonen, samen met vertegenwoordiger Holger Wegner (Masterrind Duitsland), het systeem geïnstalleerd.

De belangrijkste reden om te beginnen met CowManager was arbeidsbesparing en flexibiliteit. Tijdens de oogst tijd is de familie heel druk, dan hebben ze iemand nodig die op de koeien let. Matthias "Door de implementatie van CowManager zijn wij veel flexibeler geworden. Het is goed om in deze tijd een paar extra ogen in de stal te hebben."

De familie kocht in eerste instantie CowManager met de module vruchtbaarheid en nam de modules gezondheid en voeding twee maanden op proef. Na deze proeftijd is besloten om beide modules alsnog aan te schaffen om het systeem helemaal compleet te maken.

"De module gezondheid geeft ons de mogelijkheid om al vroegtijdig te starten met behandelingen. Met de gedragsgrafiek per uur monitoren we de behandeling en kunnen gemakkelijk controleren of de behandeling aanslaat," zegt Henry, de zoon van Matthias. Ook geeft Henry aan dat ze met de module voeding de effecten van de rantsoenwijzigingen kunnen monitoren en waar nodig kunnen optimaliseren.

Matthias Tibke – Deinstedt, Germany

“De mogelijkheid om iedere koe op elk moment op te zoeken via mijn telefoon maakt het makkelijker om de juiste beslissingen te nemen.”
 

In 2015 overwoog Trailside Dairy (Fountain, Minnesota) om een bedrijfsleider aan te nemen om de koeien beter te monitoren. In plaats daarvan kochten ze CowManager. Mike Johnson: “De mogelijkheid om de status van iedere koe op elk moment op kunnen te zoeken via mijn telefoon maakt het makkelijker om de juiste beslissingen te nemen.”

Na de aanschaf van CowManager is bij Trailside niet alleen de tochtdetectie na de vrijwillige wachttijd (VWT) verbeterd, er zijn ook meer koeien op het optimale moment geinsemineerd waardoor het gebruik van staartverf (tailpaint) als tochtdetectie middel is afgenomen.  Ook heeft Mike gemerkt dat hij nu vaker koeien tochtig ziet die 19 tot 22 dagen ervoor ook tochtig zijn geweest, hij heeft dus beter de cyclus per koe in beeld.

Volgens Mike is de gezondheidsmodule in combinatie met de module vruchtbaarheid om tochten te bevestigen het grootste voordeel van CowManager. Hij voegt eraan toe: “Met CowManager is het opsporen van mastitis, problemen bij verse koeien en andere ziektes aanzienlijk beter geworden. Ik vind zieke koeien nu eerder, waardoor ik ze eerder kan behandelen en ze sneller herstellen.”

“Je kan niemand aannemen die 24 uur per dag hetzelfde werk doet als CowManager.”

Baas Dairy in Barrhead Canada begon in Juli 2015 met het CowManager systeem om hun vruchtbaarheidresultaten te verbeteren. “Nu hebben we constant ons vaarzen en koeien in beeld” zegt Bert.

Tocht attenties komen binnen als er een verhoogde activiteit is, 18 uur daarna worden de koeien geïnsemineerd. Voor CowManager werden alle koeien in de ochtend geïnsemineerd, nu wordt dat gedaan op het best mogelijke moment. Bert stelt dat 85 tot 90 procent van de kudde nu is op basis van natuurlijke tocht wordt geïnsemineerd.

“Je kan niemand aannemen die 24 uur per dag hetzelfde werk doet als CowManager. We zijn volledig gestopt met hormonen sinds we CowManager gebruiken. Het is fijn om de koeien alsnog op het juiste moment te kunnen insemineren door middel van CowManager.”

De familie is erg blij met de resultaten tot nu toe. Door CowManager is niet alleen de tussenkalftijd afgenomen, maar het werken met CowManager is ook tijdbesparend. “Ik hoef niet langer alle koeien te bekijken, maar kan de juiste koeien de juiste aandacht geven. Door CowManager heb ik tijd vrij gekregen die ik nu kan besteden met mijn kinderen, dat is voor mij nog het allerbelangrijkste aspect van het systeem” zegt Bert.  

Over 3 years ago, Capel Farms in Carmathenshire (UK) owned by Stephen Morse had CowManager installed. When they installed CowManager Stephen expected its main benefits to come through improved heat detection. However, it took him no time at all to realize that the continuous monitoring of every cow’s temperature and rumination through the simplicity of an ear tag Sensor, would transform his herd management.

With 170 mainly Holsteins producing over 11,000 liters on three-times-a-day milking, management at Capel Farm near Carmarthen has to be spot-on. And with every milking-aged animal fitted with its orange CowManager tag – which has been designed to encase standard parlor identification tags – the benefits became apparent from the moment they were fitted.

“CowManager is so important as it gives us such early warning,” says Mr Morse. “If a cow is ruminating less and has an increase in temperature, I would immediately go and check her and may well be able to intervene.” He points to cow number 2640, flagged up on his system, and says he intervened early, treated her and by the same evening her temperature was normal.
 

But interventions have not been limited to individual animals, and Mr Morse says he has recently averted a potentially serious problem in a whole group of heifers. “Two weeks ago an infection hit a group of fresh heifers and their temperature went sky high,” he says. “The computer told me they had crashed, but the notification came so early that there was no sign of a problem in the parlor. They milked exactly the same as before as the symptoms hadn’t hit.” With a bacterial infection diagnosed by the farm’s vet, Mr Morse was able to use both an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory, and quickly quashed the problem.

With the system now firmly established at Capel Farm, Mr Morse says he has no intention of managing without it; he’s found he can head off problems before they develop and of course, heat detection and reproductive management are also better than ever before. “CowManager kind of fell into my lap but now I can’t imagine running the dairy without it,” he says.