Three ways monitoring technology can benefit your dairy workforce

1) Less frustration and injury potential

Even for the most experienced herdsman, sorting cattle can be a challenge. As herd and prey animals, cows’ natural behaviors often lead to human frustration.

Handling animals every day will never be totally frustration-free, but SenseHub Dairy sorting gates create a calmer and less stressful environment for cows as well as workers. Sort gates link to the system to automatically divert cows from the milking parlor return lane into a separate pen for breeding, treatment or other management interventions. Touch-free sorting allows workers to focus on meeting cow needs instead of spending time searching for and sorting animals that need attention. 

It’s also important to keep in mind that a 150-pound person is no match for a 1,500-pound mature Holstein cow. When workers sort individual cows manually, there is always risk of being stepped on, knocked down or pushed against the wall. Automatic sorting gates reduce the chances of human injury — as well as injury to the animal — when sorting cows.

Reducing sources of frustration or potential injury naturally leads to greater job satisfaction, motivation and worker retention. The time-savings from technology allows workers to focus on more fulfilling animal care tasks that deliver more value to the dairy as well as to the individual.

2) Opportunities to develop dairy industry skills

Herd managers who spend their lifetimes working in dairy farms develop what some call “cow sense” — a seemingly uncanny ability to spot a cow that’s off her game, often well before anyone else notices. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to train someone to have an “eye for cows” because it’s based on years, if not decades, of cattle experience.

Today’s dairy labor force doesn’t always have that innate ability. Often, new hires have never worked on a dairy before. With customizable monitoring reports at their fingertips, workers can accurately identify cows needing attention and take appropriate action with each cow. This tool quickly helps build confidence in employees, motivates employees to continue improving their skills and opens doors to opportunities with greater responsibility in different parts of the dairy.

It’s not only new hires who appreciate the benefits of SenseHub Dairy. I work with a young second-generation owner at an Upper Midwest dairy. Even though the young owner grew up on the farm, he wasn’t directly involved with the cows until taking over the dairy a few years ago. Monitoring fills that knowledge gap and builds confidence that the right cows get the right attention at the right time.

Monitoring will never replace a person’s cow sense but rather will enhance it. And cows that are identified as at-risk by the monitoring system still require proper disease diagnosis by a veterinarian or trained herd manager. Accurate and trustworthy monitoring technology tools present a great opportunity for worker development and advancement — with or without a lifetime of “cow sense.” 

3) Engage workers in training and outcomes

Anyone involved with training knows that learning is most effective when workers know the “why” and not just the “how” of tasks around the dairy. Consistency and objective task handling are critical in dairy herd management.

SenseHub Dairy data and reports can help reinforce worker training with real-world examples of why it’s important to follow protocols and procedures to the letter. It can be beneficial to show an employee the negative effects on the cow when there is protocol drift in health treatment protocols or other daily management tasks.

For example, rumination data can demonstrate to the feeding crew how delays in delivering feed can affect cows, driving home the importance of consistent feed delivery schedules. By reviewing this data, the feeding crew can see the effects on cows and their rumination when they don’t adhere to feeding protocols and/or make mistakes in mixing feed ingredients.

Monitoring data also can present very positive teachable moments by showing how proper compliance leads to the results you want. It’s possible to use monitoring data to establish benchmarks, and potentially a rewards system, tied to continuous improvement in cow care.

In summary, technology helps make life easier for workers and better for cows. With labor at a premium, it makes sense to create a positive work environment where accountability, confidence, and trust are a given so your employees want to come to work and can focus on doing the best job possible with every cow, every day.

SenseHub®Dairy is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease in animals. For the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of disease in animals, you should consult your veterinarian. The accuracy of the data collected and presented through this product is not intended to match that of medical devices or scientific measurement devices.