Digital tools in dairy farming
Impulse farms Animal welfare share their practical experience at EuroTier digital 2021
The first EuroTier digital came to a successful close on Friday 12 February. Over 41,000 visitors dialled into the DLG's digital platform over the four days of the event. They informed themselves about the products and services of around 1,200 participating companies, engaged in discussions at over 300 specialist events and networked with the industry in a targeted manner.
The companies in the Focus on Animal Welfare network network were actively involved in the design of the EuroTier trade programme. At the DLG Beef Spotlight on 12 January, the three farm managers literally had to get out of the cold to take part in the talk round on the topic of "Digitalisation and automation in dairy farming - good for animal welfare?". The participants and the 530 members of the audience were welcomed by Dr Hans-Joachim Herrmann (Animal Welfare Competence Centre for Cattle at Landesbetrieb Landwirtschaft Hessen), Dr Gudrun Plesch (FiBL) moderated the discussion.
Julia Hewecker, farm manager of an animal welfare label farm with 250 dairy cows in Hesse, Jasper Metzger-Petersen, an organic farmer with 500 cows in Schleswig-Holstein, and Bastian Buschhaus from North Rhine-Westphalia, who has his 270 cows milked by a robot, joined the discussion.
All three emphasised the opportunities that automated recording offers in the early detection of diseases, but also pointed out possible limitations. For heat detection in heifers, the farm manager at the Hewecker farm relies entirely on the automated recording of animal behaviour. For her, animal welfare-oriented animal husbandry is always synonymous with labour-intensive animal husbandry, which is why digitalisation has not brought her any advantages in certain areas. For example, the calves are now watered by hand again because the staff could not cope with the operation of the automatic feeder.
At Jasper Metzger-Petersen, the organisation of daily work processes is already digital, with farm employees sharing information - such as heat observations - via messenger services and, above all, saving it for later tracking.
On the Buschhaus farm, optimised use of the data recorded during each milking process from the automatic milking system (e.g. temperature, fat-protein quotient) has led to an improvement in disease prevention and therefore animal welfare. The aim on the farm is to extend the inter-calving period and selective drying off with the support of digital data. For the farm manager, it is important that routine work is largely carried out by robots so that he can concentrate on management work.
The participants engaged in a sometimes controversial discussion with a high level of expertise and showed that the success of automation and digitalisation on the farm depends not only on the form and degree, but also on user acceptance.