Dairyman wins 500K for his innovation

Plus, dairy tech makes the Top 25

Nov 23, 2024

New York dairyman Jody Neal of Orleans Poverty Hill Farms recently won half a million dollars to continue to develop his teat prep gun. He won $20,000 earlier this year. This is the largest prize the farm has won for its innovation thus far. We featured this innovation earlier this year.

Jones-Hamilton Company (Sponsor)

Manufactured in the USA by Jones-Hamilton, ParlorPal® is an affordable way to control ammonia and lower pH in calf hutches, bedding and footbaths.

Learn more here.

Automated 3D computer vision model measures cow welfare in freestalls

In-barn cameras may be able to detect cows that have difficulty getting in or out of a freestall cubicle, according to new research. In a new study in the Journal of Dairy Science, a Swedish team of researchers found that a new automated model accurately detects posture transitions in dairy cows. This innovative approach using three-dimensional (3D) pose estimation offers valuable, unbiased insights into animal welfare and could offer a less time-consuming and more consistent cow welfare assessment tool for researchers and farmers.

Cattle Eye now a medium-sized dairy tech company

Recent news reports say that Cattle Eye is now used on 150,000 cows worldwide. This would move it to be a medium-sized dairy tech company. Companies that touch more than 100,000 and fewer than 1 million cows fit into this category.

See how The Cow Tech Report categorizes dairy tech companies based on number of cow touches here.

Dairy tech makes the Top 25

A quarter of the articles in Progressive Dairy’s Top 25 articles of 2024 (as chosen by the number of views online) were about technology, including aseptic milk packaging, milking robots, automated feed centers and data use on farm.

Check out the full list here.

Researchers report their work with computer vision at cattle slaughterhouse

Australian researchers recently published new work showing they have trained cameras to be able to watch for several cattle activities in holding pens at a slaughter house. Their cameras can detect animal behaviors such as lying down, standing, walking or drinking, and lameness. They can estimate overall animal activity level and count the number of head in a pen. The goal of advancing the technology is to simplify the behavior monitoring of animals awaiting harvest and automate animal welfare assessments.

Idaho cattle ranchers graze around wildfire burnouts with virtual fencing

Idaho ranchers are using Vence to graze areas recently burned by wildfire.

Dairy profit projections from ZISK

Projected profitability for the next 12 months for two dairy herd sizes DECLINED 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 Nov. 22, 2024):

1,000-cow dairy = $783,300 (DOWN about $61,900 since the beginning of November)

2,500-cow dairy = $2.718 million (DOWN about $168,000 since the beginning of November)

The Cow Tech Report