Michigan State University authorizes $75 million for new dairy facility
Plus, how to clean a barn camera
Plans for a new facility include a new freestall barn that will incorporate robotic milking.
The current dairy milks 250 cows. The expansion will include increasing the herd size to 680 cows. Work on the new facility will commence in 2024. Read more about it here.
AfiMilk (Sponsor)
On his 1,400-cow dairy, Jeff Potter has boosted conception rates and saved money on labor and meds with Afimilk technology. Explore how you can, too.
Chat-GPT anniversary: Hands-free AI wearable to ship soon
We’re nearing the 1-year anniversary of the public launch of Chat-GPT and the launch of generative AI. I still remember where I was the day it happened – a hotel room in McCall, Idaho, while there for a hockey tournament with my son.
Now almost a year later, I feel the future of hands-free AI is coming too.
I was excited to pre-order my Humane AI pin this past week. I’m excited to test if this new wearable makes putting AI into practice much easier. If you haven’t watched the launch demo of Humane AI, you should check it out.
Supreme International (Sponsor)
Supreme International is the first company in North America to
manufacture the vertical feed processor and is recognized as the best
TMR processor in the world. Learn more here.
Japanese activity monitoring startup making headlines
A Japanese activity monitoring startup company was recently featured in English language press. The company, Farmnote, is wholly focused on the Japanese dairy market so they often fly under the radar. Opportunities to read about them in English don’t come along often. Check out what this company is doing with activity monitoring collars and cloud-syncing here.
How to clean a barn camera
Check out this social media post from the students at Western Kentucky University’s SmartHolstein lab. They got creative when one of their computer vision cameras needed its lens wiped clean.
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 Nov. 20, 2023):
1,000-cow dairy = $247,900 (DOWN about $87,100 in the last three weeks)
2,500-cow dairy = $1.332 million (DOWN about $1,000 in the last three weeks)