Calf monitoring
Not only do the Pentermans monitor cows and heifers, but their calves wear an ear sensor too. Though not originally designed for young animals, the devices provided valuable information during a crisis situation when calves were first moved into automated feeding and group housing in 2016.
“When we built the calf barn, we were losing calves every day, so I started putting the same sensors from the cows on the calves,” Sander recalls. What he discovered came as a surprise: After calf activity slowly ticked up for the first five days on the auto-feeders, the calf would crash. “Then, all of a sudden, activity was gone,” he says.
The culprit was identified not as a disease or feeder malfunction but rather improperly poured concrete, which prevented washwater from draining out of the feeders after each cleaning cycle. They chose to keep the tags on the calves to help in managing the challenges of group housing, and that has worked out quite well.
“Now we are hitting almost 2 pounds of growth per day,” Sander says. Newborn calves spend the first five to 10 days in individual pens, then move to one of four group pens where intakes are as much as 7 gallons of pasteurized milk each day.
A hands-off approach
When it comes to pen moves, the Pentermans’ prerogative is for cows to stay put.
“We don’t move cows anymore. Every time we moved a cow, you could see them stop eating because they were not comfortable in the pen and had to fight for their spot,” Sander explains. “Dry matter intake would go down for a couple of days, and you lose pounds there.”
Now, instead of regrouping cows three to four times per lactation, they remain in their respective age groups until dry-off: two 2-year-old groups, two middle groups, an older group and a “tail-end” group.
“On the employee side, it’s nice because you can show them [on the report] what the cow has to go through if you put her in the wrong pen for a day,” he adds. “We use it for employee meetings to show that this is where we lose money.”
The same goes for lockups. Sander limits the time the fresh group can spend in headlocks to no more than one hour to minimize stress.
Managing metabolics
Sander recognizes transition cows are an at-risk group, which is why he balances the ration specific to their needs. One impactful change was purchasing a tub grinder to reduce the length of hay and straw in the diet. “You could see on the graphs that, once we started using it, dry matter intake went up tremendously,” he notes.
Sander says displaced abomasums are “hardly existent anymore,” down from about 5 to 6 percent. Likewise, they only see about 2 percent of cows with ketosis and less than 1 percent with retained placenta.
Improving efficiency
As Dutch Dairy has multiplied from 320 cows in 2002 to its present size, the Pentermans have focused on efficiency, and technology like cow monitoring has been a big factor. The dairy is designed for easy, low-stress animal handling. “Everything is set up for one person, so only one person is needed to give a shot or move a calf, not two,” Sander says.
That allows employees to dedicate their time to more specialized tasks. Amy adds, “Though we still have the same number of employees, we’ve eliminated some outsourcing and do more in-house.” In the past, they used an outside breeding service, but today, that job is handled by a trained farm employee.
“If we do have employee turnover, we can still run our day-to-day and function with less people if we need to,” she adds. “It allows more flexibility on the dairy.”
The Pentermans are optimistic about a recent advancement in their monitoring technology that could take efficiency to an even higher level. They are currently piloting a cow locator (Find my Cow), a hand-held device that looks similar to a cell phone and operates off WiFi. More information about Find my Cow.
It works by entering the number of the cow to be found and, as the user walks through the barn, an alert indicates how close the cow is and when she is found.
Sander believes this will help him and employees spend less time looking for cows that need to be bred, treated or given special attention. “I’ll be able to walk by and find cows just standing in front of the feedline,” he says.
With cow comfort and health as their guiding principles, and efficiency part of their motto, Sander and Amy Penterman look forward to continuing to use technology as a means of reducing reliance on hormones and antibiotics, providing a high level of care for their cows and calves and, ultimately, producing quality milk for their own family and others.