Monitoring Calf Health on the Dairy Made Easier With New Technology
Monitoring calf health on the dairy farm just got easier with new technology from Merck Animal Health.
Erica Tessman with Merck’s Dairy Monitoring Technology team says, “See the light, take action. Don’t see the light, leave the calf alone,” when explaining how their new SenseHub® Dairy Youngstock system works.
She says the more you can proactively do with dairy calves to make their routine more consistent from day one instead of maybe pregnancy one or lactation one, the better, and this technology will help with that.
“So, you put a monitoring ear tag in the ear of the calf. What that’s going to do is gather all these data points which are behaviors- activity, suckling, things like that. With a calf, we’re really going to be focusing on health, So, they’re not going to have a ton of rumination early upfront in the first few days. So, we’re really just going to make sure that they’re eating the way they should be eating, they’re moving around the way they should be moving around, and if they’re not doing that, we can intervene at the right time. And there’s still a person that needs to make the decision on what to do with them.”
She explains where you’ll find the return on investment by using this technology.
“I like to think about this as instead of having a full-time employee managing 200 calves, you now have a full-time employee, through the monitoring device, for every single calf. So, 200 full-time employees, 24/7 that never have to take a break and are always working at all times, right? To make that then one full-time employee a lot more efficient. Really, the ROI comes from lower mortality, lower morbidity rates, probably less input costs, and then the labor savings.”
Click the link to learn more about SenseHub® Dairy Youngstock from Merck Animal Health.
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