Dairy farm management gets more complex every day. If you do not already have a dedicated tech specialist on your farm, now is the time to decide who should take charge of managing these systems for your farm and integrating data to help your team make informed decisions.

Big data is extremely useful because it helps paint a picture of what is really happening on farms. In a sense, it’s like paint by numbers. Each data point we collect is a number that must be filled in.

The dairy business is at an inflection point where technology is advancing at a such fast pace that the opportunities to move the industry forward seem limitless.

“Big data,” a term that can be defined as enormous amounts and various types of data that can be used to analyze patterns, trends and associations, has allowed researchers to better understand how dairy cow health, growth and milk production have changed over time.

Cattle may have been domesticated for centuries now, but they remain prey animals and work to keep their secrets. Those masking skills were beneficial thousands of years ago, but they can create herd management challenges today.

Dairy farmers rely on accurate data to make timely decisions. Instead of standing knee-deep in meaningless numbers, farmers now have the context needed to act on this information. In this episode, Evine van Riemsdijk, CowControl global application manager for Nedap, introduces the cloud-based platform, Nedap Now, and describes how farmers can access relevant insights around the clock from any location.

Overwhelmed by data? You’re not alone. Whether it’s data from your herd management software, milk testing, parlor or milking robot, or other technologies, we’re immersed in a sea of data.