The more you know about your animals and pasture the smarter management decisions you can make. That’s why we’re big believers in the power of technology to help make us better farmers. So the summer edition of our blog we thought it would be worthwhile sharing with you the different technologies we use on a daily basis at the Rockley Angus Stud, as well as our nearby dairy farm, to save time and work smarter not harder!
Gallagher Weigh Systems
We’ve liked working with Gallagher products for many years now because we’ve always found them to be durable and easy to use. Our Gallagher Weighing system is a cloud-based technology that lets us track growth performance of individual animals using a wireless weigh bar and a handy phone app.
Resolution Farm Management Software
We were an original user of Resolution over 10 years ago and have found it to be an excellent tool ever since. Basically, it’s an online diary that we use across our team to record everything we do. Data we capture includes everything from the date/dosage of animal health treatments to seasonal rainfall comparisons. And its GPS mapping function is great for fencing plans and to show which paddocks have been sewn and/or sprayed.
Stockbook
Stockbook is a tool that helps us evaluate the success of our breeding programme. We use it to record matings and joining, to show us how successful our AI was, to create fertility and weight gain reports for all progeny, and to record their sale prices. Having this data at our fingertips lets us make constant improvements to the quality of our herd and our stock management processes. It helps us track our Stud Dams progress and performance and is a good tool for helping weed out the unproductive cows.
MSD Allflex Collars
MSD Allflex Collars let us collect actionable data on our dairy stock at the individual level in real-time. All our cows wear these collars which keep track of multiple data points, including rumination and temperature to help us detect sickness and treat it early.
Halo Milk Vat Monitoring
Our Halo system continuously tracks and records the status of our milk vats, including their temperature, volume, stirrer status, pre-cooling temperatures, wash temperatures, and valve positions. If anything goes out of its permissible range we get an instant alert on the phone.
Minda and Protrack
Protrack is another herd health management tool that we use to record dosing and manage in-shed feeding. With Minda integrated with Protrack in-shed automation we can control portion size for individual animals. It’s an easy way to know when we need to feed lighter animals more and heavier ones less, which improves growth performance across the herd and minimises feed waste.
Other useful technologies that we use to save time and improve productivity are automatic milking cup removers and pivot irrigators that we can control from our phones. We have variable rate on our irrigators so that parts of the pivot can be turned off in wetter areas and around buildings.
Farm technology is developing so rapidly it can be hard to keep up. If you have experience with other technologies that you think could help us work smarter at Rockley Angus, or on our dairy farm, we’d love to hear about it. And of course if you have any questions about our technology or what we do with our breeding program you most welcome to get in touch.