Description
Johnny and Rianne Lensink, living in Aalten, recently started using a Bluetooth system to register the hours of grazing of their milking cows. At the farm 55 cows are milked by a milking robot. Free cow traffic is applied on the farm and it is therefore difficult to prove that the milking cows have at least 6 hours to 120 days of grazing. In coming years, it will probably be obliged by the milk processors, to prove that the cows walk outside sufficiently, Johnny said. By means of the Bluetooth system, it is possible to determine how many hours an individual cow is outside for grazing. There are four receivers that register a cow is walking inside or outside the barn.
Reason for the innovation
The farmer offers his farm for testing the innovation by the company called Dorset
- Achievements: The systems works good and has no failures. But the farmer has no added value by the system, his farm is just a ‘test location’.
- Suggestions: Better onlaying the innovation
Farm description
Environment
- Soil: Sandy
- Climate: Temperate oceanic
- Altitude: ±sea level
- Slope: flat
Grassland management
- Grazing: Yes
- Grazing management: Rotational set stocking
- Length of grazing periode: 200 days/year
- Main composition grassland: Perennial ryegrass, timothy grass, meadow fescue
Structure
- Annual work units (AWU): 1
- Agricultural Area 23 ha UAA
- Permanent grassland 19 ha
- Herb-rich grassland 4 ha
- Production method: Conventional
- Stock
- 55 dairy cows
- 6 young stock
- Breed Mainly: Fleckfieh and Holstein-Friesian
Animal performance
- Milk production: 9 100 kg/year
Why it is working
The innovation is successful on this farm because:
- The farmer can register the hours of grazing
- This results in a grazing premium for the milk
- The efficiency of grazing system is better now, because the farmer have a easier management tool for the grazing premium
- The Digiwei system is in development to get also health– and heat monitoring. This will give additional information to the farmer in the future
