Censortec CowControl is a collar-based activity monitoring system that gives dairy farmers heat alerts, health alerts, and custom management reports to improve their herd’s fertility and production.
Dick and Eoghan O’Neill, who are based in Ballymacoda, installed Censortec CowControl seven years ago.
According to Dick: “Cow numbers had gone up to 260, and we felt there just had to be an easier way to manage our heat detection.
“We were watching the cows, and tail painting, and someone had to go and watch the heifers on an out farm every morning too. We were spending a lot of time and labour on getting heat detection right.
“We’re quite happy with the system. You learn how to use the information you’re given, and when you get the results, you put more faith in it,” Dick said.
He continued: “As well, it’s been very reliable. We haven’t had any issues with the collars in the six years since we installed them. The reliability is one of the main reasons we chose Censortec in the first place, and it’s proven itself time and time again.
“The collars make the whole thing very compact. They can’t take all the credit, but they’re definitely a big help. They have cut out a lot of the labour around heat detection, and our submission rates have gone up. We’d a 9% empty rate this year.”
Censortec CowControl powered by Nedap has made Dick and Eoghan’s life far easier by reducing labour and helping to improve results. Stock bulls were an integral part of the O’Neills breeding system before installing CowControl.
“There was always an issue with the bulls, you could never have enough of them. One would get lame, another would get injured, and suddenly, heading into the last few weeks of breeding you’ve four or five bulls not able to do their job, with more cows still to serve,” Dick explained.
Now, Dick and Eoghan use 100% AI across the herd. The use conventional semen on the cows, dairy on the top 40% and beef on the remainder. Their maiden heifers are on an out block and are also fitted with collars.
Dick said: “We pick the best heifers based on genetics and breed them to sexed semen. We used a Fixed Time AI programme, and find it works quite well.
“The heifers that got sexed semen had a 60% conception to first service this year, and we had 70% conception rate across the whole group.”
CowControl
Dick and Eoghan find the benefits of CowControl’s Health Monitoring a real bonus. CowControl measures the time a cow spends eating, ruminating, being inactive and showing other active behaviour.
The system then compares this behaviour with standards for optimum condition, the previous behaviour of the cow and the behaviour of the herd.
It turns this information into relevant alerts, to-do lists and reports for farmers to effectively manage the health of each cow and the entire herd.
Dick continued: “If a cow has a health alert, there is an issue there. It might be underlying, and it might not be visible, but if you ignore it, you’ll regret it, and you’ll end up with a bigger issue.
“It’s still working while the cows are dry. We were feeding a high straw diet one year, and that affected the cow’s digestion.
“When we started getting alerts from different cows it made us look at them as a group and we changed the diet. As well, we now foot trim the cows at dry off, because of the alerts we were getting due to lameness when cows were dry.
“The routine trimming has solved a lot of that, but CowControl drew our attention to the issue in the first place.
‘We’ve definitely saved money in the years since we installed CowControl. We’ve saved labour, and the herd’s health and fertility has improved. It’s showed us issues that we were able to solve once we knew there was an issue.”
Under the new TAMS III scheme, Censortec CowControl powered by Nedap is eligible for up to 60% funding, depending on which scheme the applicant applies through.
If a farmer applies through the Animal Welfare and Nutrient Storage Scheme, the technology including collars and base station, is eligible for 40% funding, while under the Young Farmer Capital Investment, Organic Farming Capital Investment and Women Farmer Capital Investment Schemes, farmers can receive 60% TAMS funding.
Tranche 4 of the scheme is currently open for applications.
Censortec CowControl powered by Nedap is available from Censortec, who are based in Co. Kerry. Censortec are the agents for Nedap CowControl in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Censortec have been supplying Nedap SmartTag since 2016 and have a long-established relationship with Nedap. Nedap is based in Groenlo in the Netherlands.
They are the leading supplier of bovine activity monitors globally having over 40 years’ experience in developing, supporting, and marketing their SmartTag.
You can contact the Censortec team at 066-9713000.
