Tag keeps better track of cows

“We employ technology that enables us to measure – so that we can manage,” says Billing, from Larpent in Victoria’s western district,

Billing is a fourth generation dairy farmer on Craiglands since his great grandparents walked 40 Jerseys from Ashburton in Melbourne in 1923.

He and Samantha are currently milking 450 Holstein Friesians in a closed herd on the 240ha home farm with a 100ha leased property over the road for the dry cows and heifers.

Twenty-one years ago they built a 44-unit Westfalia rotary and 12 months later as their cows were calving they fitted electronic cow ID neckbands to facilitate differential feed for production feeding - well ahead of most dairy farmers here. At that stage they were herd testing every three or four weeks.

In 2006 they had the first installation on a rotary anywhere in the world of WestfaliaSurge Dematron 70 milk meters to facilitate removal of the clusters and measure the milk quantity very precisely. 

At the moment they feed an average of 1.8 tonne per cow per year on grain concentrate, pellets and crushed wheat, based on production worked out by their GEA DairyPlan herd management system. The cows are all autumn calving and milking is all year round; as Billing says “we drag the late cows through”.

In May 2014 GEA Farm Technologies approached Billing to trial their new CowScout activity monitoring system within an existing pasture-based operation.

The CowScout tag, fitted to the collar, works with an accelerometer to gather and record the animal’s activity which determines when an animal is on heat. The CowScout tag also monitors and records eating or grazing time which creates alerts if the animal isn’t doing well health-wise.

“We were given 100 collars and we put the tags on as the cows calved,” Billing says. “Activity monitoring started pretty much from day one.”

The data collected is stored in 2-hour blocks and 24 hours of data is stored in the tag itself. The data is then constantly transmitted to the farm database when it is in range of the antenna at the milking shed. Because it is a wireless system, transmitting data via a radio technology, the cows don’t have to go through antennas to download the data. The antenna has a range of up to 500m.

“Because we get real-time alerts, high activity cows can be recorded in the software before they come in for milking,” he said.

The monitoring of eating activity as well as heat activity allows farmers to better monitor herd health. Real-time alerts can be sent to a smart phone or laptop or tablet to notify immediately if a cow is on heat, has lowered her eating pattern or if there is a system problem.

“Compared with our current system, this is far and away better,” Billing says. “It gives you real time data. We very early picked up on a heifer with a displaced abomasum because its eating behaviour had changed from eight hours a day to four hours.

“Our springer paddock is close enough to the antenna that we can monitor real time changes. We even detected a change in the way a sorghum paddock was grazed. The sorghum had sprung up to chest height, whereas the previous brassica was below knee level.

“We calved down 450 this year. We are looking at 8500 to 9000 litres per cow this season.”

GEA’s CowScout will enable farmers to increase in-calf rates through accurate and timely detection, and provides early detection of fertility problems. Importantly metabolic disorders, especially in fresh calvers can be detected early on through the eating monitoring. 

This can mean faster recovery time, reduced treatment costs and less risk of reduced milk production.