Practice Abstract - Research and innovation

Herd management system

In modern dairy farming use of herd management systems is almost mandatory, because the amount of collected in-farm data nowadays goes beyond human capacity. Modern herd management systems collect data form different in-farm sensors and assists to farmer with the well thought out reports that helps to manage dairy herd.

The data management system serves as on-farm advisor for farmer and farms workers that suggests about the manipulations that needs to be done (service, removing from group, moving to nursery etc.) based on the all the data, collected from farm animals.

By inputting the information about important events of cows life (service, calving, etc.) it is possible to obtain a proper herd documentation that is suitable for quick redacting and covers all cows life events in quick and easy accessible way.

In local dairy farms that has more than 100 dairy cows, herd management system is not rare phenomenon. In different farms are used different management systems depending on the manufacturer of other in-farm sensors, used in holding.

By introducing herd management systems in farm, in addition to easier manageable herd documentation, there are observable significant decrease of length of calving interval and days open, due to better heat monitoring, as well as decreased somatic cell count in milk and number of health disorders in farm, due to better monitoring of monitorable traits (somatic cell count, number of steps per day, body temperature, etc.)

Source Project
4D4F Data driven dairy decisions for farmers
Ongoing | 2016-2019
Main funding source
Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
Geographical location
United Kingdom
Project details

Project Keywords