TECHNOLOGY

There isn’t anything much scarier for the bookkeeper of the farm than having the farm computer crash. Just ask my husband and me; ours crashed a couple of years ago.

Dairy farmers have a vast array of emerging technological tools in their arsenal.

Automatic milking systems have been around for some time now. In Canada, their number continues to increase, with different companies now operating in the market. This is an exciting technology, more and more accurate and reliable, but it brings with it some new and interesting challenges.

Over the past few years, the adoption rate of activity monitors for heat detection has grown significantly in herds where cows are able to move about freely.

Heifers are generally the most fertile animals on a dairy. Research shows that the mean U.S. conception rate for dairy heifers is 57 percent, so it’s not unusual for dairy heifer reproductive performance to be taken for granted while focusing on the lactating herd.

Since the invention of the automatic milking machine, dairy producers have been milking in the dark.