EuroTier announces tech award winners
Plus, blockchain for cattle verification gains USDA approval
Europe’s largest biennial agriculture show recently announced several new technology winners with products for dairy producers.
The trade show has two innovation tiers – gold and silver. These are the dairy-focused winners in each tier.
Afimilk (Sponsor)
Afimilk innovation brought you the first milk meter, heat detection sensor and milk component analyzer. Over 50 years, our drive to revolutionize dairy technology has never wavered. Learn more here.
Cow-Welfare A/S’ Flex Air Stall (Gold winner)
This innovation increases cow comfort through a constant flow of fresh air put into the lying area via the cubicle bar. The innovation is intended to supplement cow cooling in barns via fans. In the photo above, you can see the air delivery tubes hung from the roof between stall rows.
Forster-Technik’s CalfGPT (Gold winner)
This innovation uses artificial intelligence from OpenAI to inquire from calf data collected by a producer’s calf sensors and automated feeders the general situation of a calf pen or about individual calves. The innovation also claims to allow producers to ingest voice-dictated pen or individual calf observations. These “voice notes” can be gathered via bluetooth enabled earbuds or headsets for hands-free input.
Betebe’s Straw Express (Silver winner)
This innovation uses automated equipment to dispense straw for bedding into a pen from overhead. It has automatic baler twine removal and can store up to 12 bales of straw in its hopper.
CowManager (Silver winner)
The company’s latest innovation uses its ear sensor to monitor calves. The company’s algorithm uses machine learning to make farm-specific predictions about the health of individual calves.
Merck’s SenseHub Dairy Youngstock (Silver winner)
This company’s new ear tag sensor for youngstock that monitors behavior round-the-clock also received an award. The sensor detects suckling, feeding and rumination and detects possible health problems earlier than clinical symptoms.
HIKO’s Easyfill feeding bucket lid (Silver winner)
This innovation decreases spilled and wasted milk when delivering milk to calves. The product is a bucket lid with a specially designed hole. The lid not only protects the cleanliness of the bucket from flies and dust, but it also allows for filling the bucket quickly with a mobile milk feeder.
Siloking’s Heavy-duty magnet (Silver winner)
This innovation makes the removal of metallic foreign objects collected during feed mixing easier. What’s unique is how the mixer’s heavy duty magnets and the housing that holds them can be removed. The new magnets can easily be taken out of the mixer. Such magnets are not typically easily, if at all, removable from most vertical feed mixers. The new innovation makes clearing collected foreign objects easier and safer for those completing this task.
BETEBE’s Urease inhibitor (Silver winner)
This innovation is a dosing, mixing and filling unit that can be attached to the company’s alley scrapers to dispense a urease inhibitor and alleviate the formation of ammonia emissions in solid concrete floor cattle barns.
Urban’s SipControl (Silver winner)
This innovation records an calf’s sucking strength and swallowing during feeding sessions on one of the company’s automated calf feeders. The device monitors deviations for each calf that can be used for predictive health monitoring.
Zinpro’s IsoFerm (Silver winner)
This innovation is a breakthrough feed additive that reinvents old technology to supercharge rumen fiber-digesting bacteria. The product won a Nexus Innovation Award in the U.S. in 2023.
Read more about all of these innovations here.
Blockchain for cattle verification gains USDA approval
A Wyoming company recently became the first blockchain-powered traceability program to gain USDA approval as a process verified program (PVP). The program allows producers to provide verification for marketing claims such as “organic” or “grass-fed”. The company, Cattle Proof, operates a proprietary software platform combining Electronic ID (EID) tags and a decentralized network to create immutable records of individual livestock.
The company claims it is “Tagnostic” which means it works with any ISO compliant tags including RFID, BlueTooth, or GPS. For USDA PVP, RFID low frequency tags are required.
Blockchain enthusiasts claim the USDA’s recent approval is proof “farm adoption of blockchain technology is gaining momentum.”
Read more here.
smaXtec launches two new AI-powered tools
Swiss technology company smaXtec recently launched two new innovations.
The first is a digital assistant that generates automated management lists based on the company’s sensor data. The company envisions the tool will be especially helpful on large farms and will improve the organization of workflows and staff resources.
The second innovation is an AI tool that delivers alerts for common dairy cow diseases. TruAdvice uses millions of data points from the company’s sensors on cows worldwide plus veterinarian-verified disease data to generate disease indication notifications.
“Our revolutionary approach, shifting from simple monitoring to preventive health management, catapults farmers worldwide to the forefront of modern dairy farming,” says smaXtec CEO Stefan Scherer.
Milk Sustainability Center now open for signups
Two global manufacturing giants recently went public with their collaboration to improve the sustainability of milk production. John Deere and DeLaval have partnered to form the Milk Sustainability Center and recently announced that the online platform is open for the customers to sign up.
The center will facilitate the “integration of agronomic and animal performance data to give farmers the future ability to benchmark their data … to make real-time changes that provide for an increase in productivity and a reduction in CO2 emissions,” says Dave Chipak, director of product management at John Deere.
The collaboration is developed and powered by the Dairy Data Warehouse.
Read more here.
Dairy profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for the next 12 months for two dairy herd sizes DECLINED SLIGHTLY 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 Oct. 25, 2024):
1,000-cow dairy = $1.044 million (DOWN about $34,000 since the start of October)
2,500-cow dairy = $3.411 million (DOWN about $95,000 since the start of October)