When the words “precision feeding” come up, dairy producers usually have one of two very distinct reactions: excitement or hesitation. There are three easy precision feeding technologies outlined in this article that could help dairy farms maximize their current operations.

In modern agriculture, technology and automation have become more accessible, and small equipment can now pack a big punch. Application drones have given farmers the ability to do their own aerial applications.

There has been much variation in the dairy industry in how nutritional management occurs on automated milking system farms. In a recent large benchmarking study of automated milking system farms from across Canada, we aimed to quantify that variation, describing the diets fed on those farms and also detecting associations of nutritional practices with productive metrics from those farms.

Winter is here and with it comes colder temperatures, wet or icy ground and snow in some areas. Despite the changing weather conditions, you still need to get work done, and farm tire maintenance is crucial to staying productive, no matter the weather.

Milking technologies have changed over many decades, so have feeding strategies incorporated on the dairy farm. For those using automation to milk cows, providing feed at the robot was thought to be paramount to the system’s success. Recently, some automated milking producers have started to rethink this approach.

Routines to maintain udder health change with the transition to automated milking. In a parlor, most of the monitoring of the cow, the equipment, and to some extent the environment, is part of the milking routine. It is completed by the workers in the parlor as they prep, strip and attach milkers. In automated milking, it is important to develop daily routines to monitor those milk quality control points in other ways. 

Applying inputs onto crops is a part of any production operation – directly or indirectly. So, how can we be applying these inputs so that they are more efficient and cost conscious? Many have turned to spray drones for the answer – quickly making drone-based aerial application a sustainable option for the future.

Austin Ruud didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur when he had the idea for a compostable net wrap. Though he comes from a family of entrepreneurs, he had spent the past seven years working full time on the family cow-calf operation in northern Alberta.

When looking to buy new equipment or build new buildings, one of the key considerations is the cost of ownership or their fixed costs. The largest of the fixed costs is depreciation.