Data Driven Dairy Decision For Farmers (4D4F) aims at developing a network for dairy farmers, dairy technology suppliers, data companies, dairy advisors, veterinarians and researchers to improve the decision making on dairy farms based on data generated by sensors.

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Sensors & Welfare: is this the future?

Author: Janine Roemen (ZLTO) - July 10, 2017

The director of the Dutch animal protection organization, Femke-Fleur Lampkamp, presented a short session at the Aeres University about sensor technology and animal welfare, in which she stated that sensors can monitor the behavior, health, growth and heat of the animal on individual level. Therefore, changes in these paramters can be identified earlier and underlying diseases can be treated sooner (or maybe even prevented). Also, general knowledge about the animals and their behavior increases through data collection, analysis and exchange.

Three questions on heat detection

Author: Maarten Crivits (ILVO) - July 3, 2017

Managing the period of insemination is a complex affair because a lot of information needs to be taken into account. You don’t know when exactly the cow will be in heat, and often one needs to work within a limited timeframe. Furthermore, heat detection takes skill and time (at least two times half an hour/day). Due to this complexity, it is good to consider the insemination as a separate period, following the period of ‘starting up’. Starting up means: providing an animal at about day 55 that has remained healthy in its first month of lactation without passing through any negative energy balance. Also, an it has been shown that when a cow loses less than 0.5 point BCS, pregnancy rate increases considerably.

4D4F Workshop in Bucharest

Author: Livia Vidu (USAMV) - June 21, 2017

On June 9,  the first Romanian workshop dedicated to the 4D4F project was held at the University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Animal Science. The event was included in the International Conference program "Agriculture for Life, Life for Agriculture". At this workshop, 33 people participated: researchers, experts in the field and PhD students from Romania and the Republic of Moldova.

Pilot: Following your cows with real-time data

Author: Janine Roemen (ZLTO) - June 19, 2017

ZLTO from the Netherlands is setting up a project in collaboration with a data science company and sensor/management software producer. Connecterra is the data science party in this collaboration; they are a start-up company that produced Ida, the intelligent assistant for dairy farmers. 

 

Photo: Cow equipped with "Ida", the new health and activity tracker from Connecterra.

 

 

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