58 | Dairy Tech in Texas: Managing 8,000 Cows with Activity Monitors featuring Nathan Moroney, Del Rio Dairy
Episode description
One of the big challenges that comes up for dairy farm owners and managers as they grow and scale is this: Should you invest more heavily in highly-skilled, really good cow people, or invest in technology to do the things a good cow person could do?
What if there was a way to streamline your cow flow and work flow, that allowed those really good cow people to focus their time and attention only on the cows that really need it, and what if that could cut the number of cows in your hospital pen by 30%?
Well, that's what's been possible for Del Rio Dairy in Frionia, Texas, and manager Nathan Moroney talks about:
How the data is helping Del Rio Dairy save 30% of cows from ending up in the hospital pen
Why every pre-fresh heifer gets a collar in close-up pen
The high value of dry period data
How to get employees to buy in on new technology
As Del Rio Dairy has grown from around 3,000 cows to now the upwards of 8,000 and expanded to include 3 parlors on site, including the most recently built 90-stall rotary, they moved from capturing basic data from milk meters to now a full suite of real-time rumination and activity data from GEA CowScout activity monitoring collars.
The High-Performance Mindset Series is powered by Nedap. Nedap is future-proofing dairy farms by revolutionizing cow-side care through technologies in activity monitoring, cow locating, milk metering and identification. Listen for more episodes in this series throughout 2023.