Afimilk shows off under-the-belly milking robot rail
Feed additive achieves a 95.2% enteric methane reduction in cattle trial
Israeli-based milking equipment manufacturer Afimilk has designed an under-the-belly robotic milking system for medium-sized dairies (suitable for dairies milking 500 to several thousand cows). The system deploys multiple robot units the length of the parlor, and these units run on a rail underneath the belly and between the feet of the cows. The robot is designed for use in a parallel parlor.
The robots stop at assigned cows for milking, clean teats with brushes and attach milking cups from stations anchored on the wall of the milking pit. Automatic takeoffs remove the cups when milking is finished. The system is on test farms in Israel but could be sold commercially within the next year, the company says.
See the system in action below.
Researchers improve computer vision accuracy in barns with new method
Japanese researchers recently reported 90 percent accuracy in tracking individual cows in barns across multiple cameras with a new method. The researchers’ novel approach stitches live images from camera feeds into a whole-barn layout, including the overlapping areas of each camera image. This allows computer vision to sense a whole barn’s layout, its population of cows and uniquely track cows wherever they are in the barn.
Read more about their novel method here.
Bromoform-based feed additive achieves a 95.2% enteric methane reduction in cattle trial
Enteric methane inhibitor startup Rumin8 recently reported its product significantly reduced methane emissions without affecting animal productivity. The company claims the reductions are among “the most substantial reported” by synthetic inhibitors. The key component of the ingredient is synthetic bromoform or tribromomethane. The results are the first published scientific data on the product.
Additional trials are currently underway globally as the company pursues regulatory approval for its novel feed and water-delivered methane-reducing additives.
Read more about the results here.
Researchers and companies race to create HPAI vaccine
Multiple companies and government-funded initiatives are ongoing to create a vaccine to protect cows against injection with HPAI. One would be a nasal vaccine and the other would be an injectable vaccine which used a recently approved new method for vaccine development in its creation. Zoetis already has a conditional license to use one of its existing vaccines in certain use cases and for a limited time to combat HPAI.
Dairy profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for the next 12 months for two dairy herd sizes DECREASED in recent profit projections from ZISK.
ZISK is a profit projection smartphone app that tracks individual dairy farm profitability based on current CME board prices. Projections for a 1,000-cow dairy producing an average of 80 pounds of milk per cow and a 2,500-cow dairy producing an average of 85 pounds of milk per cow are provided.
12-month dairy farm profit projections (as of May 1, 2025):
1,000-cow dairy = $591,000 (DOWN about 35% since the first of the year)
2,500-cow dairy = $2.213 million (DOWN about 28% since the first of the year)