USDA Launches Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food

In one of our posts last week, we mentioned how more and more, consumers are interested in knowing where their food comes from. And, consumers trust producers to tell them about their food more than anyone else. The USDA recently launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Reconnecting consumers and institutions with local producers will stimulate economies in rural communities, improve access to healthy, nutritious food for our families, and decrease the amount of resources to transport our food.” To learn more, view the press release distributed by the USDA or visit the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food website.

Eastern DairyBusiness Features Lely

The September issue of Eastern DairyBusiness featured an article on Alan Simons, a Michigan dairy producer who recently installed a Lely A3 Astronaut. Click here to read the article and learn how robotic milking changed not only the Simons’ dairy business, but their personal lives as well.

Social Media Advances Our Industry

We know that consumers are becoming more interested in where their food comes from. It’s up to us, as an industry, to let consumers know the actions we take on our farms have a foundation in quality animal care, food safety, and a wholesome, nutritious final product. Dairy Herd Management ran a great story recently on how we can use social media to spread the positive story of agriculture to consumers.

The Oct. 14 addition of Dairy Herd Alert contained some information about someone who is doing just that. Will Gilmer is telling the story about his dairy, and the dairy industry, through multiple social media mediums. Click here to learn more and to see one of Gilmer’s YouTube … ahem, excuse us … MooTube videos.

Ig Nobel prize for study showing cows with names produce more milk

From The Times

October 2, 2009

Daisybell, Buttercup, Maybelline or even Norma. Giving cows a name increases their milk yield.

This surprising insight into bovine motivational psychology by scientists at Newcastle University has been rewarded with one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes, an institution that rewards “research that makes you laugh and then makes you think”.

While the concept sounds somewhat farcical, the study was intended as a sincere investigation into cow welfare. “You’re laughing in the face of science!”

Catherine Douglas, who led the study, said. “The whole study was about how stress and fear can have a biological effect on milk yields.”

However, she conceded she was thrilled to be sharing the Ig Nobel award for veterinary medicine with her co-investigator, Peter Rowlinson.

The study involved 516 dairy farmers in the UK and revealed that the average amount of milk produced by a cow over its annual ten-month lactation period is 13,198 pints (7,500 litres). Cows with names had an average higher milk yield of 454 pints.

Nearly two thirds of farmers in the UK said they “knew all the cows in the herd” and 48 percent agreed that positive human contact was more likely to produce cows with a good milking temperament.

Almost 10 percent said that a fear of humans resulted in a poor milking temperament.

“The most important thing is for cows to be treated as individuals,” said Dennis Gibb, a dairy farmer who owns Eachwick Red House Farm near Newcastle upon Tyne with his brother Richard.

“We have got more than 300 cows, and they’re all named after flowers or trees.” However, he said there were limits to their originality when it came to naming, admitting that one cow was called “Holly the 15th”.

The Ig Nobel ceremony took place at Harvard University.

MANNINGTON DAIRY FARM EMPLOYS MILKING ROBOT
Submitted by eigenlance on Sun, 08/23/2009 - 8:48am

A farm may be the last place you'd expect to find a robot but apparently, some of these machines have long been taught to milk cows.

Doak Dairy Farm is New Jersey's first farm ever to install the Lely Astronaut A3 robotic milking system. Actually, Astronaut A3 was first launched in 1992 and is already being used by many dairy farmers worldwide.

Joe and Cindy Doak, the farm's owners are delighted with the robot's capability to milk 65 cows daily, with each cow being milked 3-4 times a day. What's more, including shutdowns, which the robot automatically performs thrice daily to clean itself up, it can operate 24/7 throughout the year.

If you watch the video at the bottom, you'll notice how the cow enters the milker's holding area voluntarily. A microchip in the cow's collar is then scanned to determine whether it is ready for milking. If it is, the cow is locked in, her teats cleaned, and then milked.

Everything is done free of human intervention. Thus, Joe and Cindy can go about other farm chores, making them even more efficient and have ample time to take a break.
Quality is not compromised; au contraire, the milk's color, blood, and viscosity is analyzed before being released.

The Lely robot does not come cheap though. It costs a dazing $225,000. However, if you consider the savings it brings in, Joe and Cindy are expecting bigger returns in the long run.

Michigan State's KBS Dairy gets onboard with LELY robotic milkers

FORBES magazine recently published an Associated Press article about the new Michigan State University experimental dairy with the latest in dairy technology, including LELY robotic milkers. The Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) is Michigan State University's largest off-campus education complex and one of North America's premier inland field stations.

public for the first time. Along with the self-milking system, the dairy includes such LELY innovations as automated rotary back scratchers and automatic manure scrapers.

Equipment like the self-milking system can help reduce small and mid-range farmers' labor costs — important when milk prices are low, as they have been in the past year.

"It's tough for small operations. We've lost four dairies in the course of the last year," said Matt Leonard of Belleville, Wis.-based Argall Dairy Systems, an equipment supplier to farmers in the area southwest of Madison. The LELY robotic milking system is designed to make small and mid-sized dairies remain competitive, at the same time allowing the dairyman a measure of freedom and the ability to focus attention on other aspects of the dairy or his family life.

As robotic milking takes hold in the U.S., LELY is at the forefront as the world leader in robotic milking.

New data on cows and heat stress

We've just published a new monograph on heat stress and cows. The unique thing about this paper is that the data are gathered in a proprietary way...through the use of Lely's QUES-H infrared cow detection system mounted on individual cow collars.

These units are used to identify cows, their feeding and lactation activity and production history for use in conjunction with our Lely Astronaut A3 robotic milking systems. Now we're producing cow-specific data on heat stress and it's impact on fertility and milk production.

Contact us at 888-245-4684 if you'd like a copy.