The Missing Part of the Insights Equation

Dairy farmers rely on accurate data to make timely decisions. Nedap Now offers farmers 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.

What is the new platform Nedap is launching?

Nedap Now is a cloud-based software platform that builds upon the cow control suite of solutions we already offer to the dairy industry. Actually, since the late 1970's, we have been creating innovative products that are accurate, reliable, and relevant to dairy farming. But now we know there's more need for data, data storage, data management for decision-making. And the current system might be limited in that sense. The extension to the cloud will offer new ways to work with data towards the future way of farming.

What sensors around the dairy will this cloud integrate with?

Basically, it integrates with a wearable tag on the cow. The system monitors the cow 24/7 to keep track of her daily routine and to inform through an easy dashboard when a cow deviates in her behavior. This information is interpreted in in a positive way, like when she demonstrates a heat attention or negatively when she might have a health issue. Now with this cloud application, we can analyze even more of the datathe cow is gathering, not only day-to-day, but also over time within a group or between farms. And that's just a start. There's so much more data on a farm, for instance, with milk meters capturing milk recording, but there are also other sensors in industry. And now, we also envision how we can integrate that data through other innovative platforms or farm management software systems. Everything comes together to the full data portfolio on a farm.

What are the top three things about Nedap Now you're excited to talk to farmers about?

I'm most excited about our new heat score. The cow's heat expression is now ranked according to a five-star ranking. It's the same way you look for a restaurant or hotel, the four or five stars you'll go immediately, right? For three stars, let's see why they had a three-star. It's the same way we're judging these cows.

The second cool thing I would say is more on a herd level.

We know when cows are eating and what time of the day. Cows are now telling us by showing how many cows are eating at the same time, when the feed is delivered, when feed is pushed up or when there's no feed available. The information is expressed in a graph. But still, if that's happening today in real time, how do you know if that's what the cow expecting?

What we’ve built now with historical data and computer learning is a 10-day range from the past days before, how consistent is a day of a cow and now it works in three ways.

• First, when does the line deviate from normal cow behavior? Something was different in feed management, or feed was delivered later.
• Second, if you see cows are eating less with fewer animals at the same time as usual, maybe something was wrong with the feed, you might've changed something in your ration which changed the behavior of cow eating patterns or maybe for some reason the cows are in headlocks longer.
• Third, which might not be applicable to every farm today, but is a trend as farms become larger or farms are becoming more specialized between sites. And that’s the ability to track cow data across sites.

This third point is applicable if have a dry cow freshening site and afterward returns tothe milking facility. The cows havea wearable and they're gathering data every day, so when they're moved between sites, you don't want to lose any of the data. With the cloud connection, you can connect all the sites of your farming operation. So even when you move cows between sites over time, none of their data history gets lost.

Can you talk about the other moving pieces around the dairy that are maybe outside of the scope of the Nedap brand that would potentially talk with this technology?

As I mentioned,, it can be a new way to connect your own farms on a multi-site operation. It's a new way to connect your people internally, but also with external parties who advise you. The most important connection we're making is with farm management software because there are so many dashboards or platforms or systems that farms work with and we don't want you to have four or five screens open at the same time to make decisions based on five, six different dashboards. We really enabled that integration to collaborate with the other farm management software systems. And we keep on developing this to communicate more . So in the end, the dashboard that you prefer to work with for certain topics contains the same information and you don't have to gather this from different sources anymore.

Are there internet restrictions? And is a farm protected if its internet goes out?

The cloud has so many new opportunities to really crunch the data for more strategic decision-making on farm management. However, it does depend on the internet. And with farms being in rural areas and not having the dependability of internet at all times, we built in an offline mode. This means when our system knows it's not connected to the internet, it will switch back to an offline mode. It's a reduced version of what the cloud offers, but it still gives you an overview of the cows that are in heat and the cows that have a health issue. You can still work on your day-to-day business.

Hear more on Nedap Now from Evine in this Progressive Dairy podcast.