New Allflex herd monitoring system a first for Tasmania

A North-West dairy operation has become the first Tasmanian farm to install a system where farmers can monitor cow health on their smartphones.

Paul and Anthony Nichols who are installing a new electronic cow monitoring system on their dairy farm near Smithton.

Technology is being used to tackle some key herd management challenges on a North-West Tasmanian dairy farm.

The Nichols family run a 1300 cows operation near Smithton and they are the first farm in the state to install an Allflex Heat Time Pro Plus electronic monitoring system.

The system which uses electronic collars on the cows can provide information about individual animals including heat detection and changes in rumination.

It can also provide emergency distress notifications, which can be sent directly to a smartphone.

Unique algorithms in the program helped it win an innovation award at the 2017 World Dairy Event and it is now used on over 5.5 million cows around the world daily

Allflex livestock intelligence specialist Clancy Jordan said the collars also have the ability to learn the normal patterns for each animal and can provide notifications if there are changes.

“Essentially what this is doing is giving the cows a voice,” Mr Jordan said.

“The very first indication that something is wrong with a cow is going be changes in rumination, so with this system you can find out what’s going on with that cow a lot earlier. It could be the start of mastitis or it could even be something like a rock stuck in a cow’s foot.”

The system can also provide herd information about things like feed efficiency based on the rumination data.

The farm where the system is being installed is run by Brian and Margaret Nichols and their two sons Paul and Antony.

Mrs Nichols said their main reason for installing the system is to help detect animal health issues including a mastitis as soon as possible.

She said a lack of experienced milking staff in region meant they often employ workers with no dairy experience, which can make identifying problems early difficult.

The herd has good milk quality and a relatively low cell count, which is something the family wants to maintain.

They are also keen to use the system’s heat detection features to achieve better results in their artificial insemination programs.

“We had quite a high empty rate so we’re going to see if we’re missing mating cycles when we’re inseminating,” Anthony said.

The family put collars on 300 heifers in the herd last week and plan to increase that number later on.

Mr Jordan said the adoption of this technology in mainland operations had been fairly significant.

Calving is now in full swing on the property and Paul said they are looking forward to seeing how the new system works.

“It’s a bit of a trial but we’re hoping it will help, especially with mastitis detection, if we can find out which cows which might have a problem earlier we can treat them sooner before it gets too bad,” he said.