Heat time monitors & parlours

[pappuller]

Are you sure ?

Presume you meant sub rate

 

[multi power]

We were annually replacing about 20 - 25% of the collars which was a drain. Instead of spending money on extra collars we were spending money just to maintain what we had.

I always struggled for accuracy with them too. Making sure the collars were in the right place and right tightness on the cow was always a pain in the ass.

In truth, they aren't more for me. Spending my time doing my own version of RMS has worked really well and so I will be carrying on with that instead of doing a job I struggle to get enthusiastic about putting collars on cows.

You being a one man band probably don't need heatime, if I had more time or less cow's to look after I could spot them myself, I like the fact it works when I'm sleeping or not here

 

[organicguy]

And you're preg rate is?

Conception for 1st Nov to 6 Dec is 57%, have not calculated submission after first cycle.
VWP starts at 60 days for first cycle and then 42 days to take peak off calving as we rear everything and do not want 200 calves on milk twice a day for too long. 209 in milk, 113 back in calf, 60 heifers on top over two cycles.
Fertile Friesians

 

[Rossymons]

You being a one man band probably don't need heatime, if I had more time or less cow's to look after I could spot them myself, I like the fact it works when I'm sleeping or not here

There's more than me working here now just I'm the one able enough to take care of the breeding season - an advantage of block calving.

Perhaps if I had more enthusiasm for collars I would have got better results.

I'm not knocking them completely though - I have friends who love them and good for them. For me in a block calving situation such as OP I'm not sure of the benefit

 

[Turboman]

Have heat time in here but I think dairy master moo monitor is more user friendly. If I'm swapping collars on heatime it's a job writing transponder numbers down and then manually inputting into the control box. With the moo monitors if you have a smartphone you put the collar on the cow and scan the transponder with the app on a smartphone input cows number and the jobs done. With the phone app you also get text alerts when cows on heat. Collars last ten years and battery can be replaced. Wish I had seen it before buying heatime. I think cogent are promoting the moo monitor system too.

 

[Scholsey]

Have Fullwood pedos, had heatime before went into robots and collars were failing but got on really well with it. Cows going out to graze completely messed the Fullwood pedos up and some cows averages haven't ever evened out even now! Fullwood are currently paying for us to lease cow watch from Alta until they get on top of it!

 

[organicguy]

Have Fullwood pedos, had heatime before went into robots and collars were failing but got on really well with it. Cows going out to graze completely messed the Fullwood pedos up and some cows averages haven't ever evened out even now! Fullwood are currently paying for us to lease cow watch from Alta until they get on top of it!

Had never thought of that as an issue, autumn block calving, our cows are generally in before we start serving. seeing the difference in activity would be much more difficult with walking to grazing.

 

[Scholsey]

Had never thought of that as an issue, autumn block calving, our cows are generally in before we start serving. seeing the difference in activity would be much more difficult with walking to grazing.

Sorry it's not very clear but the green line is activity and this cow is a good example of how 6 weeks of grazing for half the cows messed up nearly every cows activity monitoring and some are still not right now. Fusion are looking at it but 3 months later have still heard nothing back from them.

 

[vantage]

What was wrong with the collars? Have them here, I love them, but I kind of hate them too, the newer ones are much better

We were annually replacing about 20 - 25% of the collars which was a drain. Instead of spending money on extra collars we were spending money just to maintain what we had.

I always struggled for accuracy with them too. Making sure the collars were in the right place and right tightness on the cow was always a pain in the ass.

In truth, they aren't more for me. Spending my time doing my own version of RMS has worked really well and so I will be carrying on with that instead of doing a job I struggle to get enthusiastic about putting collars on cows.

We had trouble with collars failing with the original heatime walk through system,it was extremely frustrating and a PITA,also insufficient collar numbers.After much thought(and a handsome discount from SCR ) we upgraded to heatime LD collars for every cow and have been delighted at how well it is working.
We run two calving groups.

 

[Verney_R]

Sorry I said preg rate which wasn't what I meant but you gave me the answer I was looking.

Do you see any advantage over having these collars to what you're doing now? High submission followed by high pregnancy numbers would tell me you're doing a-ok so far.

This is is the question I'm posing, we're looking at putting auto id and auto seg in, and it works out to be £4000 extra for the heat time? The only benifit I see it being is an extra aid for picking up bullers but we do the same as your selves, our own version of rms, we had them in for 3 years and thought we could do it ourselves as we we're watching and picking out cows for them, and we seem to have got on well so far, just trying to do the best we can

 

[Milkcow365]

This is is the question I'm posing, we're looking at putting auto id and auto seg in, and it works out to be £4000 extra for the heat time? The only benifit I see it being is an extra aid for picking up bullers but we do the same as your selves, our own version of rms, we had them in for 3 years and thought we could do it ourselves as we we're watching and picking out cows for them, and we seem to have got on well so far, just trying to do the best we can

I had the same problem when buying parlour, but in the end went for peds as I'm not feeding and couldn't get cows heads in mangers for auto id

 

[Verney_R]

I had the same problem when buying parlour, but in the end went for peds as I'm not feeding and couldn't get cows heads in mangers for auto id

So what have you done to get around that? Pleased with the peds?

 

[Milkcow365]

So what have you done to get around that? Pleased with the peds?

Peds are a walk through id yeah pretty pleased, just a bit of a pain putting them on and taking them off, as I'm a flying herd I have a high turn over of cows so it's never ending

 

[Eminus]

Is a heat time processor worth much? I don't have any collars to go with