Precision dairy conference and proven accelerator to return in 2021
Plus, 15 manure treatment technologies get funded
DFA announces accelerator class for 2021
Kansas City-based milk co-op DFA announced this week that it will go forward with an ag tech accelerator class in 2021. The company also announced a new name for its accelerator – DFA CoLab.
“We are looking for those companies that have their eyes downfield and have what our farmers are asking for,” said Doug Dresslaer, DFA’s director of cultural innovation. “We try to find technologies that are going to help farmer margins.”
The company says it is interested in seeing technology applicants with solutions in the following cow tech areas: antibiotic alternatives; herd health and management; renewable or alternative energy; farm labor solutions; automation and robotics; on-farm connectivity; animal identification and monitoring; and animal transport.
Since launching the accelerator five years ago, DFA has worked with 25 ag tech startups. The list of cow tech companies that have participated in the co-op’s previous accelerator rounds include:
Armenta
Bezoar Laboratories
Healthy Cow Corporation
HerdDogg
Labby
Livestock Water Recycling
My Dairy Dashboard
Pharm Robotics
SomaDetect
Read more about the accelerator here.
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My Dairy Dashboard releases 2.0 version
A start up that is several years in the making announced its newest version this week. My Dairy Dashboard’s interface now has double the number of visuals plus year-over-year comparison charts. The company claims the new version can easily spot data trends. The cloud-based software now has dynamic filters to dial in on dairy KPIs.
“The platform provides a holistic view of key farm metrics – in real time – facilitating timely and more effective decisions for our customers, which in turn will benefit their bottom line,” says Mitch Norby, chief innovation officer for Dairy.com, which owns the software.
Read more about the new version here.
Funding will enable testing of 15 manure treatment technologies
A clearinghouse platform for evaluating manure technologies announced this week it received USDA-NRCS funding that will allow it to test 15 manure handling and treatment technologies at locations across the U.S.
“We are excited that NRCS has funded Newtrient through the Conservation Innovation Grant and are eager to provide our farmer members with this important information needed to implement new technologies that can help reduce the environmental footprint of dairy,” said David Darr, senior vice president, chief strategy & sustainability officer at Dairy Farmers of America.
Newtrient lists more than 250 manure treatment solutions on its website. It also scores technologies on a 9-point scale.
One of those evaluation points (No. 8) is the completion of a case study by Newtrient to validate a supplying company’s technology claims. Only 16 of the companies identified on the site have this third-party validation completed to date.
Learn more about Newtrient and the companies it catalogs here.
Biennial precision dairy conference to be held in 2021
The Precision Dairy Conference is on track to be held June 22-23, 2021, in Minnesota. Marcia Endres confirmed to The Cow Tech Report that the conference will follow its very other year schedule and proceed as a hybrid event. Endres envisions live participation locally as well as online streaming, with video recordings available after the event is over.
“We want to stay with our schedule of holding the event every two years because we're still building a reputation for this conference,” Endres said. “I want to make it very practical, very applied.”
Endres said plans for topics at the conference include discussing precision feeding, precision cow management, robotic milking, data integration, research reports and a vision for the future of dairy automation.
This will be the fifth such conference held in the U.S. since it began in 2013. Proceedings from previous conferences can be found here.
Watch The Cow Tech Report for updates about the conference or request to subscribe to updates directly by emailing miendres@umn.edu
AI for predicting genome expression on-farm coming to the cattle industry
A company with “advanced analytical approaches” for extracting information from cattle DNA SNP chips and on-farm production data announced its technology will now be available through Vytelle. The company – Synomics – claims it can now offer cattle producers “new intelligence” to correlate data from genome (DNA) to phenome (expression of DNA in production environments).
“We’ve already demonstrated [in other ag sectors] that we can more accurately explain the correlations among genomic, phenotype and environmental data driving new insights for health, production and fertility traits for producers,” said Steve Gardner, founder of Synomics.
The use of the technology will further “fast-forward” genetic cattle progress, the company claims. Vytelle and Synomics are part of the Wheatsheaf Group, an international investor in food and agriculture.
Read more about the technology here.
Profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for two dairy herd sizes INCREASED this week in the 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. 29, 2020):
1,000-cow dairy = $542,400 (UP about $58,000 from last week)
2,500-cow dairy = $2.07 million (UP about $190,000 from last week)
Source: Zisk