Gerard thought: “What if you could measure a cow’s health, fertility and even recognise heat stress and transition issues beforehand? Always keep a detailed eye on your herd, even when you aren’t physically present?”
He changed the dairy business forever by inventing the first ever cow monitoring ear sensors in 2004.
CowManager is built and continuously upgraded on years of knowledge, university research and worldwide on-farm tests.
“Every day we gain experience among the cows in our own company. I regularly walk among the cows and discover what could be improved upon, what information is needed,” Gerard said.
And because of his own farming background, he knows it’s best to not work for farmers, but with them.
“We actively listen to our customers. We have customers (and local representatives) worldwide who actively think along about innovations and test them on-farm.”
By now, thousands of farmers across the globe, including many in Australia, monitor their herds with CowManager’s ear sensors, which results in non-stop valuable cow data and ongoing developments.
The key to this success? Ear temperature.
In developing a non-invasive system like the ear sensor, Gerard effectively combined innovative farming technology with so-called old farmer’s wisdom.
Back in the day, whenever dairy farmers would doubt if a cow was feeling well, they would first feel her ears to check for a change in temperature.
Cow’s ears are full of vital information which tells us how they’re actually doing. Whenever a cow gets an infection, the blood in the ears moves to vital organs. A crucial sign, which can save you a lot of problems further down the road.
CowManager ear sensors monitor cows’ rumination, eating, inactivity, activity, ear temperature and high active behaviour.
The CowManager data graphs show you the ear temperature of the specific cow compared to the average of the total herd. Does a cow have an ear temperature 7°C lower than the herd average, and is there an alert of illness? You’re the first to know.
Never miss a heat again, improve your in-calf rates and say goodbye to tail paint and Kamars. On top of that, CowManager cows live longer, produce more milk, are in better shape and perform better.
CowManager still is the only cow monitoring system out there to successfully measure ear temperature combined with other parameters. This combination results in more accurate and earlier alerts.
It catches sick cows days before they even show clinical signs of being ill and lets you monitor recovery in detail. It never lets you miss a heat, and makes breeding a breeze, even with sexed semen.
And it makes the transition period — when 75 per cent of all adult cow disease events find their origin — easy to monitor, recognising underperforming cows up to 50 days before calving, so you can avoid surprises after.
With the MultiView function, which is available on every CowManager system, dairy farmers can easily share important data with veterinarians, staff, herd managers, AI specialists, nutritionists and researchers.
This lets them monitor the herd’s performance as a team, completely changing the way business is done for the better.
CowManager is the only system to give remote access to cow’s data and history dating all the way back to the install date.
It gives you a complete overview of cow data in easy-to-read coloured graphs that allow you to analyse results and progress per cow or group or even season, so you can recognise patterns and opportunities together.
From CowManager.
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