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Ian & Carmen set up their farming operation in 2018, starting with 80 cows and working on increasing to 110, saw many attractive benefits to putting in robots, starting with just one robot they put another in 2020.
Now looking to the future with their business and a focus on sustainability as they set their goal to reduce their amount of antibiotics being used with a goal of decreaseing overall bulk SCC.
They researched a company called AHV (Animal Health Vision) – who are an innovative animal health company. Working in partnership with AHV they are seeing huge benefits by reducing their penicillin use.
They liked the idea of strengthening an animal’s immune system rather than treating with penicillin right away. They are developing a more natural approach to their herd’s health and focussing on why a cow is run down and as a consequence getting mastitis. They believe it is better for the health of the cow, and the milk they supply, to have this approach.
During the last few years the Comins have learnt to manually separate the cows with higher SCC, and with the right course of action, have seen positive changes within a couple of days. This has led them to better understand what can cause their SCC to change.
They are able to do this with help from the Lely management platform system to identify those cows that show the first indication of infection and have been monitoring the progress of the cows treated with the AHV products.
Comins have used the use of technology to help provide valuable information such as:
Report # 10 – Health report ( For example)
This report combines available sensors on the farm to identify the cows that need attention on first response.
These health attentions gives the Comins insight on the, animal number, group, lactation, days production, sick chance, sensor reason eg – milk temp / SCC indication / activity, value and severity.
Report #23 Milking Udder Health Analyze
The Udder health report provides information of attention cows with suspected udder health problems. This list combines milk sensor information, (milk yield, conductivity, colour and optional cell count).
These are just two of the reports that assist the Comins to identify the animals that need their care and attention.
If you’d like to learn more about automatic milking feel free to download our brochure of the Lely Astronaut A5 here below.
If you would like more information round these reports or you need help with Horizon, the team is here to walk you through it, just give team a call or reach out to us on,
E-mail us at FMS-oceania@lely.com
Phone: Villingi Young – 021 534 817or Briar Loveridge - 021 947 404
