Technology game changer

The program was initially designed for heat detection, based only on activity monitoring technology.

Now the SCR Heatime HR LD tag worn by cows that operates wirelessly by radio frequency contains a motion sensor, microprocessor, memory and specially tuned microphone that detect the cow's activity and rumination in real-time, 24 hours a day.

Semex Australia’s product manager for the Heatime technology, Vaughn Johnston, said it was so precise, it was capable of picking up even relatively weak signs of activity during a cow’s heat and/or illness.

A seminar about the technology will be held on Wednesday at International Dairy Week at Tatura, Vic.

Mr Johnston and South Australian dairyfarmer David Altmann, who was the first farmer in Australia to start using the technology, will discuss the technology at the seminar to be held at 2pm.

Mr Johnston said rumination (monitoring cud chewing) was also now part of the technology, and he pointed to health monitoring research showing that rumination was the leading sign of a healthy cow.

Rumination and activity have a direct correlation to heat detection and/or an early onset of illness in an individual or a group.

Both are also indicators for calving, and Mr Johnston said they were almost at the stage where the technology would be able to alert dairyfarmers when a cow was having a stressful calving.

Altmann family

Their higher production had translated into shorter heats, and even though they did not join before cows had been milking 50 days, heat detection had become an issue.

Their two-year-old heifers, in particular, were producing 94% of the herd’s mature-aged cows’ production, and had been the most challenging to catch cycling.

“This works on the motion of the neck muscle behind the cow’s ears and I was convinced that finally something had come out that was going to be really accurate,” he said.

“One of the biggest bug bears for me if I went away — and I don’t go away that much — was heat detection.

“You might have a cluster of cows on heat and three or four obvious cows standing and you might have another three or four milling around. You’re not always sure if they’re on or not.

“We milk three times a day on a total mixed ration [TMR] system, and we’re around these cows all the time and yet we were still missing heats.”

Before they took on Heatime, their average days open was more than 158 days.

After the first year it dropped to 131, in the second it fell to 118 days open and in its third year it dropped to 78 days.

Mr Johnston said:, “It’s always a challenge to get cows that milk 11,000 litres in 305 days in calf, and if you can do it without large doses of hormones or synchronisation, it’s a great thing.

“Because the Altmanns get lots of milk, they hadn’t been that hard on cows that didn’t get in calf because they could milk them through.

“But as they have got to know the system and they have been able to accurately intensify their fertility program, they have reduced the days open significantly. The system has paid for itself within three years.”

Mr Johnston said reducing days open achieved the savings: every day saved about $3.40. In Altmanns’ second to third year, reducing the days open by 39.9 days on 311 cows equated to a saving of $42,190 in just 12 months.

“They went from dealing with 35 to 40 cows a month that were becoming problem cows to just five or six, because they were getting the right information from the system and AI-ing the right cows at the right time,” Mr Johnston said.

Golders

“I wasn’t specifically looking to take it on, but we do employ several people and it intrigued me,” Mrs Golder said:

“I guess when you’ve got employees, even though they do a good job, if they are tired, watching cows for heat detection is easy to ignore.”

She said Heatime had taken the workload and the guesswork out of heat detection for their operation. The Golders’ pregnancy rate after the first insemination lifted from 49% to 66%.

“I don’t take lots of numbers out of the percentages, but there have been quiet heats where the reading is not really high, but it’s enough to trigger you,” she said.

“It’s good if a cow doesn’t have a long heat, and if she cycles overnight, it would be easy to miss completely.

“It’s great to be able to track them, and the most positive thing for me has been taking the guesswork out of it.

“It also picks up cows that are not well because it shows they have low activity and we do note it on the board.

“They might not show what it is until the next day, but the next day she may well have mastitis.

“We check them out and if there is heat in their udder we get on top of it early.”

Rumination monitoring

He said he had been impressed with early results of the addition of rumination monitoring to the program.

“A healthy cow will ruminate over 500 minutes a day. Extreme cows could push that number out to 700,” he said.

“But cows struggling with ketosis would hover around the 400-450 and a cow that is calving would drop to 100.

“The first 60 days of a cow’s lactation is crucial in setting up her lactation curve. With rumination information, cows can be identified early in their illness and barely compromise their peak production. But, as we all know, once a cow is clinically sick, it is nearly impossible to recover her peak production.

“Rumination is also fantastic for nutritional purposes within the herd because it also has the ability and range to analyse groups of animals so if you were to change a TMR ration or even got a new load of grain within 12 hours, you could see whether or not the change was effective.

“It’s great information and Heatime is the only program to get that done.”

Expo product innovation award

More than three million Heatime collars (with H, HR and LD tags) are used globally today; already the Heatime program is achieving strong results in Australia, where it is ideally suited to Australia’s grass-based dairy business.

Contact: Vaughn Johnston, Semex Pty Ltd, mobile 0408 304 526, email Vaughn Johnston

or website www.semex.com.au