Technology and Data Management on the Dairy Farm – Miniseries

Jason Hartschuh, Extension Educator, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Crawford County, Ohio State University Extension

Session 1: February 17th ,12:30 pm, register at go.osu.edu/precisiondairy1

Session 2: February 24th ,12:30 pm, register at go.osu.edu/precisiondairy2

From milking parlors, to robots, to sophisticated software….Farmers are increasingly using technology to make management decisions on farms. Dairy farming has evolved greatly over the last few decades. If there was ever an industry in need of new technologies to become leaner and greener, it’s dairy farming. Many different kinds of technologies exist in the market today. The sheer number of various technologies and the information produced by them can be overwhelming and confusing. Technologies monitoring various parameters are available to farmers and often these technologies fall into categories including nutrition, production, animal health, fertility, and environment. The decision to adopt a technology depends on factors such as management style, familiarity with computers, ease of use, type of housing system, and perceived benefit to cost ratio. Farmers have many considerations before adopting and implementing dairy technologies. Farmers must consider their unique objectives, as well as family needs.  Technology and increased access to data are enabling dairy farmers to make smarter day-to-day decisions to improve cow health, production, and on-farm efficiencies.

According to dairy tech expert Dr. Jeffrey Bewley, “technology can help farmers in many aspects on the farm and the farmers who can capitalize on the value of the data will have a competitive advantage in the future.”

Bewley, an expert in dairy analytics and technology and currently working at Holstein Association USA, will delve deeper into the role of technology on dairy farms on February 17th starting at 12:30 p.m using the virtual meeting tool Zoom; to register visit: go.osu.edu/precisiondairy1.

Join us again virtually on February 24th at 12:30 pm for a dairy farmer panel on utilization of technology on the farm. A panel of dairy farmers from across Ohio that use precision dairy farming technology in both robotic and parlor operations will be joining us to answer questions about how these technologies benefit their operation. The farmers on our panel each have unique experiences using technologies produced by many different manufactures. They will share with us how their farm management has changed to incorporate the technology to improve cow management, health, and production; to register visit: go.osu.edu/precisiondairy2.

Each session has a separate registration you will need to complete in order to receive the Zoom registration link. Both programs are free of charge.