Vaccine to reduce cattle methane production still in the works
Plus, what is tech debt? And how much of it does your cattle operation have?
Several pieces of cow tech news slipped through the cracks during COVID lockdowns. This is one of them.
News resurfaced this week about Fonterra’s partnership to develop a vaccine to reduce natural methane production from cows. Keep this development on your radar. The Cow Tech Report is following up for more details as well.
U.S. Navy shows how not to invest in new technology
The Navy's newest aircraft carrier class is almost 60 years in the making. However, news broke recently that the first of several carriers to be built is behind schedule because the new design included “too many new technologies.”
Read more here.
Lesson learned: Take technology adoption one step at a time.
As I read through this report, it brought to mind another article I read this week about tech debt. Tech debt is defined as the “off-balance-sheet accumulation of all the technology work a company needs to do in the future.” The Navy had lots of tech debt to pay off with its new carrier design. They tried to pay it off all at once, which is not recommended.
What tech debt does your cattle operation need to pay down?
Step 1 in addressing tech debt is to find areas where technology is having a negative impact on the business. Is your operation falling behind because it hasn't implemented technology? Or is it behind perhaps because it has implemented technology but not streamlined it yet? Both of these instances are examples of tech debt.
Read more about tech debt here.
Open-source algorithms for activity monitoring emerge
I have to give a shout out to Daniel Foy for pushing this article about the development of open-source algorithms onto my radar.
One of the knocks on activity monitoring systems is that a producer is reliant on the default algorithm that comes with a program for creating alerts related to health or reproduction. However, this work shows there can be more transparency in the algorithm creation process and still see success.
I also watched a video testimonial from a U.S. dairy using activity monitoring this week. In it, they mention they are using their own algorithms to generate the level of alerts they desire.
Check out that comment at the 1:40 mark here.
How to fix the robot repairs problem
As any farmer who has installed milking robots knows, repairs and maintenance present unique challenges. Progressive Dairy recently carried an article from a dairy producer with prior experience in software design and management. Here was his solution to improve the access farmers have to help for maintenance and repairs.
The sustainable solution for technician and farmer training is sharing information by creating a process that facilitates intake, standardization, distribution and utilization of the steps needed to fix problems that arise with robots.
Read more of his suggestions about how to improve robot repairs and maintenance to benefit farmers here.
What you're missing if not a paid subscriber?
Read this subscriber-only article to find out what’s driving this year’s increase in the use of drones and cloud computing to make silage inventory estimation more accurate.
Profit projections from ZISK
Projected profitability for two dairy herd sizes have DECREASED AGAIN 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. 8, 2021):
1,000-cow dairy = $82,425 (DOWN about $167,195 since the end of July)
2,500-cow dairy = $893,575 (DOWN about $42,200 since the end of July)