Background
The O-To-To Dairy Farm was established in 2004 by three third-generation milk producers – Oshik Carmel, Tomer Keynan and Tomer Zoler (in short – O-To-To) – on Moshav Be'er Tuvia in Israel's south. From the start, the three founders understood that the success of the business would ride on their ability to make decisions based on realtime, data-driven information. The new dairy farm was built from the ground up with an eye on the changes in the milk market, and an emphasis on progress and the environment.
Today, O-To-To has 200 dairy cows, 250 calves, employs three workers, and produces 2.5 million liters (5.5 million pounds) of milk per year.
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Challenges
“A dairy farm has never been a source of great wealth, but a combination between income and Zionism,” Keynan begins. “The problem is that today, in order to have a livelihood that a dairy farm with 30-40 cows used to provide, you need 200 cows. With the current changes in the dairy market, we need to become more efficient and grow to survive.”
“On a dairy farm of our size, the manager can’t spend the day sitting in the milking parlor or walking among the cows,” continues Zoler. “He needs management tools which will provide him with an accurate assessment, and enable a quick response, even in a large herd. Late detection of disease in one cow, for example, would mean losing between 150-200 liters (330-440 pounds) of milk a day, which means hundreds of US dollars lost – even before the cost of treatment itself. When you multiply this by 200 cows, the numbers are even more significant.”
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System
O-To-To originally used a Westfalia milker, which over the years came to suffer from wear and tear and service problems. In 2012, the dairy decided to implement extensive upgrades with SCR’s advanced technological solutions.
As such the following equipment was installed: SCR DataFlow™ II herd management system with a real-time notification screen in the milking barn and an automatic separation gate; SCR Heatime® HR tags with wireless rumination monitoring, heat detection and cow identification functionality; SCR MC200 ED system; SCR MM27 milk meters; SCR P501 smart pulsators; in a 10 x 10 herringbone parlor.
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Benefits
"I feel that I control the herd much better today," says Keynan."It begins with identifying each cow's precise needs, literally within hours. We continue to increase rumination monitoring, which tells me everything. A cow that does not feel well is a cow that requires care. The targeted information has already saved us cows, by enabling us to detect displaced abomasum early."
According to Keynan: "The more that we learn to work with the information generated by the HR tags, the more significant the financial returns. Each morning, we see a list of irregularities in the cows and additional reports on the DataFlow II System.
A decrease in rumination by the cow is a definite indicator that something's wrong. Maybe it's the food, maybe the cow has an injury, or maybe she's been coughing. If we look carefully, we'll find it. In fact, with SCR, we have been identifying problems with cows at least one day earlier than before."
In addition, he says: "Relevant reports are automatically transmitted to the nutritionist in the feed center each morning, who can now respond appropriately if there are any irregularities."
Warnings and alerts of irregularities are also sent to Keynan's smartphone, so he can stay informed about and connected to the farm even when traveling abroad.
He also mentions the benefits of the separation gate, "Which works 100% error-free, and saves us from having people search for problematic cows."
"We are only now realizing how much we lost in the past," says Zoler. "If each cow produced an average of 5 liters (11 pounds) less per day, multiplied by 200 dairy cows, it's more than 2,000 shekels (approximately US $550) of loss per day. When we calculate the gains in milk yield, we realize that we could have profited from another entire milking parlor had we done this SCR upgrade a year earlier".
Summary"At least once a month SCR surprises me, whether it's by their level of service or their consideration of payment terms. They always listen to what we need, and then adjust themselves accordingly, always giving us a bit more than we asked for," summarizes Keynan. "Additionally, the daily communication and training is just incredible, helping us get even more value out of the systems."
The installation of the SCR technology also left a good impression. "A large team arrived prepared, worked on a tight schedule, and did so without impacting the dairy farm's ongoing work, " says Zoler. "We did not miss or delay a single milking. When the work was completed, they left the area clean, as if no large-scale work had occurred. It was just amazing."
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