Farm manager Michael Jones of Wyndhurst Farm in North Somerset has tried virtually all the heat detection aids available and naturally he greeted claims from the latest electronic based system to be installed at his unit with a degree of scepticism.
He is one of the first farms in the UK to use the system and after just six months of use, Mr Jones is rating it right up there with great dairy innovations like the feeder wagon.
“We have used almost every heat detection method to get our submission rate up to a high level. The HEATIME is watching 24 hours a day for us and I have become very reliant on it in a few months.
One of the big benefits is that it has taken the stress out of the constant pressure to catch cows bulling. It has given us more time to concentrate on other management jobs with the cows.
HEATIME was put in during March, so really we were at the end of our SERVICE period. The idea was that throughout this summer we would learn how to read the graphs and how you work out if the cows are cycling properly.
I now have a great deal of confidence that the system will pick up cows in heat whether we see them or not.
We put a collar on a MATURE cow that had calved in October and had not been seen bulling AT ALL, so really she was destined to be culled, but the HEATIME system picked her up and she is now in calf. That has saved a high yielding cow, its £1,000 replacement cost and she will hopefully produce a calf for either herd replacement or sale.
It’s too easy to go to extended lactation with high genetic cows, but you can very suddenly find you are 20 calves down. With replacement costs, lost dairy replacement calf sales that is a big figure to take out of the bottom-line for any farm.
Dairy farming is all about becoming more efficient, we have cut costs like every dairy farmer. Our submission rates last winter were between 60-65%, and I would be happy with a 10 % increase using this system, but I’m now fairly certain we can achieve 80% or even the 90% claimed by the manufacture".
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