Guests:  Evine van Riemsdijk from NEDAP Livestock Management and Stefan Borchardt from the Free University of Berlin

In this episode of the Real Science exchange pubcast Scott leads a discussion on cow monitoring technology and its benefits for cows, farmers and the environment. 

Ms. van Riemsdijk gives some history of cow monitoring, stating it started for identification of an animal and the feeding station for the purpose of separating milk. (6:58) 

Ms. van Riemsdijk said the sensors help see heat behavior as a whole in your barn, they help you find a scout and who has shorter heat periods, when heat starts and helps calculate optimal insemination time, even when you are not in the barn. (15:02) 

Mr. Borchardt said that a major drawback of the industry is integration, bringing these different technologies together into the herd management software. As an industry, how can we bring data and programs together to make smarter decisions? (26:29) 

Ms. van Riemsdijk said the sensors can be used while breeding cows. It can also be used as an intervention to understand why cows are not cycling correctly. (39:11) 

Mr. Borchardt said that when farmers adopt the sensor system, they realize there are some cows already showing a health alarm and most of the time they wouldn’t realize these cows are sick without the sensor. (47:23) 

In summary, Mr. Borchardt said that with farms, sensor technology and increased genomic data, we can get to a place where we are managing cows on an individual basis like precision feeding and reproductive management. (52:14) 

Ms. van Riemsdijk concluded by saying you can use data points from the sensor in heat behavior in the voluntary waiting period to make more strategic decisions with other experts on the farm. (58:40) 

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