New cowside blood calcium monitor on the market
Plus, new features for milking robot brand's robot
A Canadian-based start-up announced this week the commercial launch of its new product Calciulate. The proprietor of the product, Creative Protein Solutions Inc., claims the new product is the first rapid, on-farm total blood calcium test for dairy cows.
The new technology for measuring total blood calcium concentrations, which is first launching in Canada, has greater than 95 percent accuracy, 90 percent sensitivity and 95 percent specificity. The product consists of a user-friendly handheld device and disposable tests, which the company says only take a minute to perform and can be completed cowside. The company recommends using its new product to test total blood calcium around the time of calving and then again in the first 2 to 4 days post-calving.
Learn more about the product here.
GEA announces enhanced features for its milking robots
German milking robot manufacturer GEA recently announced new features for its R9500 milking robot. The company claims the new features save overall milking time.
The new robot can complete all milking procedures in-liner with just one attachment, including cleaning, stimulation, fore-stripping, milking and post-dipping. The feature is dubbed the “in-liner everything” process. New software logarithms further optimize the robot’s post-milking cleaning procedures by allowing some functions to occur simultaneously, shaving seconds off the process. This reduces box time per cow-milking. The company says those time savings mean the robot spends a higher percentage of its time milking cows.
The new robot also includes a new milk separation mode, allowing a producer to milk a series of special-needs cows, whose milk must be separated from the tank, without requiring an intermediate box cleaning between each cow. The company claims this feature means a producer can “accomplish daily milking chores faster and get the box back open to normal cow flow sooner.”
To learn more about the other new features of this milking robot, visit here.
AI startup and milking robot manufacturer to team up
Start-up Connecterra and Lely will be continue working together after what the two company’s said was a “successful pilot” project to test integration between Lely’s Horizon data platform and Connecterra’s artificial intelligence platform, Ida. The two companies recently announced their intention to further co-development of data products and formalize a commercial relationship.
Lely announced it will now license Ida Enterprise for use in its farm management system Lely Horizon.
“We believe that digitization of dairy farming is key and needs to be handled with care. Integrating with partners like Connecterra to develop a strong platform helps farmers to bring out the value in their data,” said Freddie Ruijs, head of digital farming at Lely.
The companies hinted that continued co-development efforts could lead to a joint launch of new features, as well as opportunities for more Lely customers to give permission to incorporate their data into, and gain access to, Ida’s platform.
Research to attempt to use mining tech on dairies to reduce methane
U.K.-based researchers will soon be testing a mining industry technology to see if it will reduce methane in indoor cow housing situations. The technology is a bimetallic catalyst based on platinum and palladium that was originally used to reduce methane in coal mines. It’s unknown if the technology could be successfully reapplied for a different working environment such as a dairy farm. Read more about the research plans here.
New ‘sniffers’ to start measuring methane on Dutch dairies
Researchers in the Netherlands recently installed devices measuring on-farm methane emissions on multiple farms. The ‘Ghostbuster proton pack’ looking device will be placed on more than 100 farms with the intention of gathering data about methane emissions on over 10,000 cows. The data will be used to inform a breeding value for methane emissions. Semen company CRV is supporting the work at Wageningen University.
Read more here.
Animal AgTech to return in March in-person; agenda now live
The Animal AgTech Innovation Summit will return to a live format March 21, 2022, in San Francisco. The conference’s agenda is now available. See it here.
Editor’s note: Save the date and start making plans to attend. It looks like a good one.
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Profit projections from ZISK
2022’s projected profitability for two dairy herd sizes REMAIN STEADY
in 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 Dec. 3, 2021):
1,000-cow dairy = $415,695 (UP
about $19,600 since the beginning of November)
2,500-cow dairy = $1.833 million (UP
about $55,500 since the beginning of November)