New teat-wiping robot arm a top product
Herding cattle with computer vision and drones makes headlines
Three of World Ag Expo’s top new products are cow technologies
World Ag Expo announced its new product winners this week and three of the Top 10 products are cow technologies.
Green Source Automation
The company that pioneered robotic arm technology use on rotaries for pre-dip and post-dip has added even more automation technology with its newest product. The new RotaryMate EXPSplus automates “teat wiping.” Now, if using all of the company’s available technologies, a dairy could automate three of the five typically “manned” positions on a milking rotary. That includes pre-dip, wipe and post-dip.
The company claims the new robot arm moves at speeds up to 4.2 seconds per stall.
Learn more here.
Cainthus
Last week Cainthus announced a new product and then this week it was awarded for its innovation. The computer vision company’s new product, ALUS Behavior, can track lying, eating and drinking and will report data in a 24-hour cow time budget. Immediately the product will deliver just insights into lying time and time out of the pen. A full-time cow budget will be available soon.
Learn more here.
Livestock Water Recycling
The company that automates manure treatment and dreams of eliminating dairy lagoons has won another innovation award for its predictive analytics on manure. Livestock Water Recycling’s AI – named Lois – is now award-winning for the second time this year. The technology was also awarded an AgTech Breakthrough award.
The new tech employs predictive analytics data from sensors and combines that with data from the surrounding environment. It uses the power of AI to achieve the lowest cost of operation, and the highest solids extraction, the company claims.
Learn more here.
See all of the award-winning new technologies named to World Ag Expo’s Top 10 here.
Drone for moving pastured cattle makes headlines
A new technology that uses drones instead of cowboys to move cattle over large patches of land is now on the scene. Israeli-based Beefree Agro has completed a proof of concept and is beginning to add pilot farms for 2021. The technology may be available in the U.S. in 2022.
After testing the drone on his own farm, co-founder Noam Azran found the drone can do in 1 to 1.5 hours what 3 to 5 cowboys can do in 6 to 7 hours. The technology seeks to help solve the labor crunch for cow handlers.
Read more about the company here.
New DeLaval R&D barn will mirror commercial dairy operations worldwide
The Cow Tech Report caught up with Lars Johansson, senior vice president of corporate communications for DeLaval, this week. Johansson discussed in more detail the company’s plans to build a new research dairy farm.
Presently the cows on the company’s research farm are not all milked robotically. Johansson said the current research farm has just about every milking system the company offers, including box milking robots, a conventional parlor and the company’s automated milking rotary.
“Having different systems provides the benefit of knowing how the market works,” Johansson said.
However, the benefit of the new farm will be the ability to mirror the way that commercial operations are operating with milking robots around the world. The new farm will more than double the size of the milking herd from 260 to 550 cows.
“It helps a lot to have a bigger farm with more cows to see how technology plays out when you go to the biggest segments with our customers,” Johansson said.
The farm will also be built to better showcase technology to visitors – those visiting both in-person as well as virtually. Johansson said the company’s recent installation of robots at Fair Oaks Farms’ new robotic milking barn in part inspired the new design for its own visitor-friendly facility. Fair Oaks Farms’ robot milking barn also has an observation overlook.
Oh, boy … I can’t believe he just said that!
The founder and CEO of Impossible Foods is making his company’s intentions crystal clear – put dairies and cattle operations out of business. And do it within 15 years.
“It’s game over for the meat industry – they just don’t realize it yet," said the company’s leader Pat Brown recently.
Read more of his inflammatory comments here. The article link also provides a detailed deconstruction of the company’s alternative meat burger and what’s in it.
Profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for two dairy herd sizes IMPROVED last week 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. 10, 2020):
1,000-cow dairy = $294,896 (UP about $111,500 in a week)
2,500-cow dairy = $1.44 million (UP about $310,000 in a week)
Source: Zisk