Technology Offering a Helping Hand

How has January gone for you?  Did you have any resolutions that have fallen by the wayside or are you still going strong?  Fitness is the usual big January goal after the excesses of Christmas and no doubt there are many Apple watches and Fit Bits giving their money’s worth well into the New Year.

Recent years have seen advanced technology play a much bigger role in achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Whether it is keeping track of those 10,000 steps a day; the macronutrients we are putting into our bodies; monitoring our blood pressure or just getting a notification that we are actually still alive and that our Amazon order will be delivered sometime between 8am – 6pm. And all from a little gadget strapped to your wrist. Amazing isn’t it?

But here in the Farming sector, we have been using this type of technology for years. It’s nothing new.

“What?” we hear you shout. “Farmers?”

Yes, we know. Farmers are often given the label of being luddites, resistant to change and stubborn to move with the times. But that is probably the biggest misconception.  Technology has always been used in the farming world to work alongside and enhance the more traditional ways of working the land and caring for our livestock.

Here at Oak Park Dairy the girls all wear their very own bovine ‘Fit Bit’ - a collar with a small microchip that monitors their lifestyle. It measures their activity during the day: activity, eating and ruminating. A healthy cow will produce a graph as seen below

The database then creates a profile for each and every cow, so it’s able to continually track her ‘normal’, as well as benchmarking her against the rest of her group. If she then goes out of character or any one of her benchmarking traits changes suddenly the system alerts our herdsman’s phone and they can do some further investigation - it might be she is feeling under the weather or an underlying problem is preventing her from going about her usual activity.  Quick intervention can prevent a problem taking hold and improve the recovery back to normal health. An example of a sick cows graph may appear as seen below.

This cow suddenly stopped eating and was feeling very lethargic for a couple days, but with this knowledge and the administration of some pain relief medication and electrolytes she made a full recovery.

Here at Oak Park Dairy our ladies are THE essential core to our business.  Without them we would not have a business, so it is vital that they are cared for to the highest standards. Their fitness, health and well-being are essential to a happy life. 

Allowing our girls to be able to move around freely, forage and interact with each other is important to their general well-being and so the ability to keep a track of their health, without disturbing their natural routine, is crucial. Good stockmanship and knowledge comes with experience but even the best can miss the small signs that a cow is feeling under the weather and so additional technological assistance is a great tool to use.

So the next time you’re out jogging and your snazzy new Apple watch is simultaneously checking your heart rate, monitoring your steps and calculating your calories burned just think, dairy cows were there first !!