Herd sizes have significantly grown in recent years and there is a huge shortage of labour, meaning automation can make farm work much easier and safer.
Dairymaster has announced the release of the latest product to its growing portfolio – DraftNow – which is a standalone drafting system, in a bid to help farmers save time and labour.
The DraftNow system can be installed on farms with or without Dairymaster’s auto identification system and is suitable with other makes of parlours that want a reliable drafting system.
The standalone cow-sorting system is available in a choice of two-way and three-way drafting which may be combined when more segregation options are required.
DraftNow is a live system allowing for instant information exchange; once a change is made on the programme or the app, it is immediately updated on the system. All information related to drafting cows can be viewed on the PC or app.
- Easy to navigate and select cows for drafting;
- Permanent and scheduled drafting e.g. cows who are lame, insemination;
- Automatically draft cows with no tags or unknown tags;
- Select by group for drafting e.g. dry off;
- Gives a history of cows drafted;
- Interactive grid to reorder and filter cows.
The DraftNow app is a support platform to the programme. It allows the user to draft cows remotely, without having to be at the PC or in the milking parlour.
It also allows for adding or editing cow data; creating a new cow profile; editing tag numbers; or assigning cows to groups.
All information is safely stored and connected to the cloud so cow details cannot be lost. The details are automatically synced when the connection is re-established.
MooMonitor+
Dairymaster’s MooMonitor+ health and fertility monitoring system is very accurate at detecting heats for cows that are housed or at grass.
Knowing when to breed these cows to optimise conception rates is invaluable to farmers enabling them to get more cows pregnant sooner.
A scientific trial conducted by Kansas State University showed the importance of the correct timing of artificial insemination (AI). Dairymaster says that MooMonitor is proven to be more accurate at perfecting the timing of AI, leading to improved conception rates.
DraftNow is designed to work in conjunction with MooMonitor+ to automatically draft cows based on the number of hours in heat. These cows will be drafted into a separate pen after milking for the AI technician.
The company has said that the DraftNow system proved to be an invaluable addition to all test farms where it has been trialed. In addition to sorting cows, other benefits such as cow and farmer safety, less stress and more control, means jobs can be done quicker and safer.
The aim of DraftNow is to make farms a much safer place as unnecessary animal handling will be brought to a minimum, decreasing the risk of animal-related incidences for the farmer.