Shearing legend hooked on CanAm
Sir David Fagan, world-renowned competitive sheep shearer with 642 shearing titles worldwide and a knighthood to his name, now runs beef and dairy operations near Te Kuiti with wife Wendy and son Jack.
In the case of dairy automation specialists Lely, its Grazeway system offers a strategy so grazing can be combined with automatic milking. The Grazeway selection box allows cows wearing individual collars to choose for themselves whether and when they want to go out to pasture. The system then determines whether or not they can.
Through a link with the Lely Horizon management platform, users have total control over each individual cow’s grazing, by linking the selection box to your cows’ milk yield data, allowing more efficient management of feeding and grazing.
In addition, the selection box works with the same management system as the Lely Astronaut, using the same double-gate system as the milking robot. Grazeway can also draft cows for treatment or insemination.
Working in conjunction with the Lely Qwes system, the intuitive cow recognition system measures the most crucial information on each cow every two hours offering a good insight into the health of cows, to prevent illness and loss of production.
Receiving an insight into the activity of the cows allows users to know when you need to intervene and if equipped with the heat detection function, helping to identify the best time for insemination, so increasing in-calf rates, while also reducing calving intervals.
Also, changes in rumination patterns are typically the first sign of potential problems, with the system sending alerts and cross referencing with milk yield data, allowing drafting or segregation for inspection, diagnosis and treatment.
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