New ‘dairy dashboard’ app to go public soon
Feed mixer company launches “cruise control” for feed delivery
Tech startup Vyla’s new Ascend app will take center stage in early September. The free app, which has been on Apple’s app store since this summer, is going public with a launch event Sept. 9.
The app initially aims to ingest many different on-farm data streams to become a KPI dashboard for dairy producers. The company’s future plans call for helping producers better control what data is shared with processors, retailers and consumers to tell dairy’s story with data-accuracy and transparency.
“We take dairy data and present a command view of it for a dairy producers,” says Vyla’s CEO Tim Taylor, who was previously leading VAS as CEO prior to taking on this role. “It’s streaming data from on-farm applications and getting APIs from cloud-based applications … to give dairy farmers control over their information and ultimately where the information goes downstream.”
Register to learn more about the app during the launch here.
Note: I’d like to thank Vyla’s team for including The Cow Tech Report in the app’s news section. Read the latest Cow Tech Report news items directly in the app. Download it today.
Mixer company launches “cruise control” for pen feeding delivery
A Kansas-based feed mixer company recently launched a new feature to increase feeding efficiency and ration delivery accuracy to cattle feedbunks. Roto-Mix’s new auto-feed system controls the mixer wagon’s throttle, ground speed and ration delivery mechanisms. The driver simply steers and monitors the rest of the automated feed delivery process. The result, the company claims, is feed delivery that is more consistent and fuel-efficient.
See the system in action below.
2nd annual dairy tech spotlight event to be held next month
Organizers for the World Dairy Expo Tech Spotlight announced that this year’s event will be held virtually Thursday, Sept. 16, at 1 p.m. Central time (US). This will be the event’s second straight year being held online.
Aidan Connolly, the president of AgriTech Capital and CEO of Cainthus, will host the event that will feature at least nine dairy tech start-ups. Six of the companies that will participate this year also presented last year. You can read about them here.
Three new comers to the spotlight include Piper Systems, SmaXtec and HerdDogg.
Register for the free event here.
Tech enables dairy to limit lockups to 1 out of every 21 milkings
Listen to Progressive Dairy’s podcast with Dr. Don Niles of Dairy Dreams LLC to learn about on-platform technology for the dairy’s rotary parlor that makes it possible for herd health managers to assess cow health, give vaccines and limit headlock time.
Two interesting technologies are discussed in the podcast at 11:20 seconds (needle-less injections) as well as at 16:30 (activity monitoring).
Niles says the next advancements in dairy must keep producers relevant to dairy consumers. In his opinion, technology then must “increase trust” and “explain shared values” to consumers.
Listen to the whole podcast here.
Pharmaceutical company introduces new tech to enable targeted antimicrobial therapy for BRD control
During this month’s National Cattleman’s Beef Association meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Merck Animal Health launched its new precision technology to identify calves that are likely to respond to antimicrobial therapy for Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD). The product is called Whisper On Arrival.
The technology is intended for use with incoming young stock transferred to a new facility. It works by listening to an animal’s heart and lungs with six sound sensors mounted together on a handheld wand. The device connects to a tablet via bluetooth. Collected sound data for each animal is analyzed in an app on a tablet and paired with rectal temperature and animal weight. A machine-learning algorithm then utilizes all of that data to predict the risk of BRD for each animal and provide the user with a suggested antimicrobial control decision: “Treat” or “Do Not Treat”.
The company claims its first-of-a-kind technology can “reduce the cost of BRD control practices, improve animal stewardship and support judicious antimicrobial use for the industry.”
Learn more about the new technology here.
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Read this week’s subscriber-only article to find out … why one Wisconsin dairy is installing activity monitoring AND machine learning AI on their farm.
Profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for two dairy herd sizes have REMAINED STEADY BUT LOW
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 Aug. 20, 2021):
1,000-cow dairy = $90,830 (UP
by $8,400 since the beginning of August)
2,500-cow dairy = $913,600 (UP
about $20,025 since the beginning of August)