At the National Ploughing Championships (NPC) 2024, a business that is set to launch its service in January, 2025, showcased its platform which is used to manage cows’ dietary needs.
MILJO is an innovative nutritional management platform that takes in the individual herd performance targets to generate the dietary needs of animals, with the aim of making herd management easier.
Nutrition is a huge driver of profit on any farm system, as profit margins will derive from how much grass a cow can utilise, and by acknowledging how much extra feed or meal has to be added to the system.
Having a nutrition plan will allow a farmer to make prompt decisions when grass is tight, or when too much feed is being allocated.
Maintaining optimal nutrition level will keep cows producing milk to their full potential.
Quite often, farmers go through the hassle of breeding high producing animals with plenty of potential, but often that potential is not fulfilled due to inadequate feeding regimes.
Managing dietary needs
The app aims to optimise dietary balance while minimising environmental impacts, resulting in improved herd performance.
Doing so simplifies animal nutrition, as the algorithm of the app has been carefully compiled with the help of experts in the animal nutrition field along with new advances in the field.
This provides the optimal diet for all of your dairy and beef herds based on optimal performance output once the correct feed is provided to meet this demand.
MILJO allows you to be in control – you can put select your own farm feeds, as well as knowledge-based parameters such as grass growth, weather conditions and time of year.
Speaking to Agriland, MILJO’s Aoife Drennan said: “The app takes genetic and grass data and milk performance to generate a feed plan, and if you are above or below the optimal line of the lactation curve, it is going to be detrimental.”
The app creates a realistic performance targets for the herd through its individual lactation curve, formulates individual herd diets.
The app adds feed available on the farm, allows you to order optimised ration to your farm, and completes an overall analysis of a complete diet and farm performance.
Drennan added: “It’s like JustEat, anytime you are running low on meal, you just log in to the app and get it ordered.”
She said that with sufficient planning, you can gain up to an extra 2L/cow/day.
Emissions
MILJO can also aid in the reduction of methane greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as research has shown that up to 12% of dietary intake is used to produce methane.
This intake could instead, be used for performance gains, as low methane producing animals are more feed efficient.
Drennan told Agriland that a nutrition plan is going to result in efficient milk production, which will aid in cow health and performance and add to a more viable and sustainable farm system.