Farm Source's recent live Q&A with Waikato farmer Chris Poole delved into his experience using IDA on-farm. He says it has brought many benefits, enabling him to keep an eye on his cows round the clock and providing peace of mind when he's not on-farm.
Amsterdam-based artificial intelligence company Connecterra created IDA to give farmers more insights into their herds and help them identify issues on-farm, find solutions and transition to sustainable farming. The technology collects behavioural data from sensors on cow collars that can be combined with data from other sources such as herd management software, farmers' feedback, and the weather within one app. It then translates data into real-time easy-tounderstand insights.
"It opens up a door to see what the cows are up to 24/7, when you don't have time to be in the paddock with them all day every day," Chris says. "We haven't looked back."
Calving and mating seasons are busy times on-farm, and Chris says this is where IDA is invaluable.
"At calving time, IDA helps us by identifying cows that may need a hand. We can sort them out as soon as possible, and prevent avoidable deaths and calving paralysis."
Canterbury-based Farm Source TSR Cristian Zavala-Ruiz has been working with Connecterra's business development manager to introduce IDA to some of the large dairy businesses around the region. He says the technology helps farmers save time, expenses and labour costs when using IDA's insights to make decisions around reproduction and health. From Farm Source's point of view, Cristian says, it's really important to innovate in this area and help the farmers be more accurate when they're making their decisions. "This tool will mean they can use some really good information to make the right decision at the right time."
Farm Source senior veterinarian Michael Shallcrass says many monitoring technologies are a 'fire hose' source of information. "If you wanted to dig into it you could spend all day looking at individual cows' activity levels. The thing that will make this product useful is that software layer that can distil out the important pieces of info from that fire hose.
"There's definitely a role there for rural professionals who are wanting to assist farmers. There's a whole lot of stuff vets want to be involved with around reproduction consultations, and this produces that information, which is so useful to help them give the farmer good guidance. If you've got a farm advisor who's looking at how changes in the diet change in rumination rate it's a really useful thing for the advisor to get real-time feedback on how those dietary changes are impacting the cows, as opposed to waiting a week and checking the fatprotein ratio in the milk. So there's an immediacy that comes with this, but there's also lots of other information. Some of that information may not be interesting to the individual farmer, but it is interesting to their rural support network," he says.
There's a lot of talk around the country about decreasing national herd size and breeding a more efficient cow, so farmers have smaller herds but the same production. "IDA will help fill the circle of information by giving us the cows that are spending less time eating to do the same production," Chris says. "Or maybe it's the more aggressive eaters that get to the paddock and eat the food quickly that we want to be breeding off to help us reduce our numbers. There are more things like that that will play a part down the track, and that's exciting for the industry."
Chris says in his experience, farmers can trust in the product. "I have a lot of confidence in the company, seeing how quickly they made necessary calibrations so IDA was useful in a pasture-based system. Seeing the things change as quickly as they have and the added features from over the three years I've had it; the calving module has become so much more accurate. It gave me a lot of faith and trust in how quickly they can get things done."
Michael agrees, saying in some ways the technology is doing a better job (than people). "It's not just mating - IDA is monitoring the cows 24/7. This stuff is being refined at a rapid pace. It's not just how good it is now, but how good it will be in 12 months' time, or in 18 months' time. It's getting better and better and I think it will totally change the way we farm in this country."
To hear more about IDA and how it can help you on-farm, check out the full Q&A video.