Learn to read all the signs

The data that is collected can assist with such routine tasks as heat detection, detection of sick animals, non-cycling cows and timing of insemination.

The different types of technology include collars, tags or boluses.

They are like ‘Fitbits for cows’ and there are multiple service providers who are selling or distributing the products.

There is also a great deal of variation that I see with the level of support and training provided in the use of the products, and also considerable variability in the ability of the monitoring equipment to integrate with other farm technology like herd management software, draft gates and milk metering equipment, so doing your homework prior to investing in this technology is advised.

The ideal set-up would integrate with all the other farm technology, be supported by a team of experts who can train and support farmers in their use, be robust and reliable and cost effective.

In seasonal calving herds, identifying non-cycling cows prior to, or as soon as possible after, mating start date is an incredibly valuable use of the monitoring equipment to improve submission rates and increase six-week in-calf rates, and in year-round calving herds it can help to identify cows who might need to be on the herd health visit list.

Unfortunately, health alerts are often switched off, offered as an add on at additional charge or simply ignored by farmers because they struggle to interpret the health alerts.

This is an incredible shame to not harness the potential health benefit of this incredible tool just because no-one has taken the time to help you to understand what a health alert might mean, how to examine a cow to increase your likelihood of determining the cause and also what to do if you cannot identify a cause for the alert while waiting to see if it develops into something that might need veterinary care.

Generally speaking, the health alert will be triggered if a cow shows reduced activity and reduced rumination, though some of the various types can also measure temperature, lying and eating time and rumen pH to help to accurately determine whether a cow might be feeling unwell.

In my experience with use of collars and ear tags to generate health alerts, I have noticed several things, one of which is that many cows will show a health alert when they have a case of clinical mastitis.

This is interesting because very few farmers recognise mastitis as being a disease that affects anything other than the udder, except for those occasional severe acute or toxic/black mastitis cases.

Over the past several years, there have been multiple studies published that have looked at the use of anti-inflammatories in mastitis and revealed that routine use of anti-inflammatory drugs when treating cases of clinical mastitis can have significant effects on reducing the risk of culling so that there is an economic return on this treatment, primarily due to the effect of improving fertility in cows affected with mastitis in early lactation.

Therefore, when I set a farm’s treatment protocols for mastitis, I routinely include non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Ketoprofen, Tolfedine or Meloxicam with whatever antibiotic treatment I am prescribing.

Not just because it is good animal welfare to provide pain relief for a painful condition, but also because I have seen the evidence from collar and tag data that tells me that even cows who don’t seem to be systemically affected to the naked eye have reduced activity, eating and rumination and increased lying time.

For farms who have invested in wearable herd monitoring equipment but might not be able to capture the full benefits either due to lack of instruction in its use or lack of experience in undertaking a thorough routine clinical examination of cows showing a health alert, you can reach out to your local ProDairy herd health veterinarians as this an area of special interest for many of our team.

– Dr Rob Bonanno is ProDairy regional manager for Gippsland, northern Victoria and areas in NSW.