Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Kiwi innovation leads the way

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Dairy is New Zealand’s top earner following the impact of covid-19 on tourism and education. Much now rests on the shoulders of busy farmers, some of whom are struggling to get their key staff back through NZ’s borders.
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Annual breeding is a pressure-point in the dairy calendar requiring skill. A Hamilton-based company is now attracting global attention and growing local sales for an imaginative solution to a perennial farming headache – Kiwi dairy farmers need to know exactly when to artificially inseminate cows.

The FlashMate was created to stick to cow hair during the breeding period to interpret cow behaviour. The red light turns on at just the right moment when the cow is on heat and the unit is easily removed after breeding without bothering cows.

“Reading body language when you have as many as 1,200 cows isn’t easy,” co-creator Matt Yallop says.

It’s a problem worth solving.

Industry body DairyNZ put an annual value of NZ$1.5 billion on lifting the percentage of cows that are pregnant in the first six weeks of the annual mating period to 78% as the key industry target. Heat detection efficiency is a critical element in achieving this goal.

NZ is renowned for its dairy prowess and the device has not gone unnoticed by farmers and experts worldwide. The device has reached far flung cows in remote Russia, Brazil, China, Chile and the Baltic shores of Estonia – even the mountains of Japan.

Dairy Industry bodies in Ireland, Japan and the USA are embracing FlashMate for its potential to lift productivity. In all three countries, clinical work has been completed to confirm the accuracy of the product.

“We’ve been stunned by the strong interest outside NZ,” Yallop, who receives offshore enquiries from farmers and experts every other day, says.

He suggests that with covid effectively eliminating overseas travel, people are very open to doing international business online, which has allowed more energy and resources to go back into the local market again. 

“There’s a huge amount of positives. I can be here in NZ with the family more and be far more available to support local farmers,” he says.

Peer-reviewed publications utilising the device are being accepted into the prestigious Journal of Dairy Science in the USA.

“It’s really exciting to see a New Zealand innovation unlocking valuable new insights into animals that have been farmed for millennia,” he says.

Once published, the science can be shared back to our industry via DairyNZ.

Yallop says that many cultures find the concept deeply amusing, adding it’s a brilliant ice breaker.

“People soon see the science and results behind the idea, realise it’s not a gimmick and are keen to see their own herds in the dark with flashing lights,” Yallop says.

“Internationally, language can be challenging, while physically performing the actions can help convey the message, this can get awkward too. 

“Google translate has also handed us some hilarious moments.”

The product has clinically demonstrated a 6.3% lift in six-week in-calf rate on NZ farms, head-to-head with skilled farmers using tail paint. A number of farms have already attributed more than $100,000 in improvements over several years, freeing up labour and helping sustain their farming way of life, while improving on-farm efficiency.

Because the device has a very low-skill requirement and makes life easier on the farm, it can help to save the day for farms affected by border closures, which may explain an early surge in local demand for the seasonal product.

Here at home most people don’t really know the full story, Yallop says, but word of mouth is growing. It has already been used on DairyNZ research farms and the product is building a strong reputation among artificial breeding technicians for alerting heats in cows that even highly-skilled farmers would otherwise miss.

“Farmers are constantly being told to use technology, but aren’t always offered a realistic starting point,” he says.

“Our approach is to keep it very simple, muck in with farms and support the real decisions farmers have to make.”

He adds that everyone in NZ should look to support our hard working farmers in every way that they can while they lead our economic recovery.

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