FAQ
What protocol deviations does the system monitor?
The system monitors protocol deviations that can be seen in a milking parlor (both parallel and rotary), holding pen and milk tank room area.
Milking parlor: missed routines (predip, postdip, wiping, stripping, attach or reattach), miscellaneous and aggressive interactions, improper usage of towels, manual machines detaches, wrong order of routine, late attach and other non-standard events such as smoking, usage of phone for a long time, cows falling etc.
Holding pen: events with crowd gate, cows (mixed, falling cows), poor handling of cows.
Milk tank room: filters changing, taking milk samples, milk spills.
The system also monitors positive events such as good postdip, stripping, wiping, perfect handling of cows in a holding pen area. However, the system is not limited to those issues and Cattle Care is ready to tailor them to clients' needs.
How can the system help lower SCC, increase milk quality and improve animal welfare?
There is no doubt that poor handling of cows and protocol deviations contribute to the deterioration of milk quality, milk loss, and hence less profit.
The system helps monitor different protocol deviations and store the historical data on a daily basis. The farmer can not only see what errors were made, but also teach employees using videos of good routines in the system. Some farmers prefer showing the milkers their mistakes in the system by bringing the tablet to the parlor, others print out the progress report or just talk to milkers.
Cattle Care team, for its part, helps notice events as soon as possible. For example, if there was an improper animal welfare that needs a farmer's attention immediately, it can be scored and the farmer receives an SMS alert with the direct link to the video report.
What benefits have other producers seen from the Cattle Care use?
Getting back the milk quality bonus, more transparent relations with employees, improved animal welfare, saved time and money - producers have seen various benefits from using the system. Moreover, some customers implemented an incentive system that offers bonuses to employees based on a set of minimum criteria for their performance, which ended up in a win-win situation for both employees and dairy management.
You can learn more about the experience of two dairymen from California in these articles:
"Parlor efficiency and productivity up on California dairy thanks to Cattle Care technology" by Jaclyn Krymowski
"Automated parlor monitoring helps California dairy lower its somatic cell count" by Walt Cooley
Does Cattle Care require special equipment?
Special equipment is not required. Cattle Care connects to your existing security cameras.
How is the data protected? Does Cattle Care keep my surveillance videos or do I still keep them locally?
Cattle Care uses military-grade encrypted VPN channel, and reports are published on the website that employs industry-standard encryption. Access to reports is restricted to authorized users only.Cattle Care doesn't keep any surveillance videos, the dairy keeps them locally.
I'm very busy with the day-to-day business at the farm. How can Cattle Care save me time?
Cattle Care can save your time by automizing the process of detecting issues at the farm. The system is easy to navigate, has necessary filters, and allows users to add reports to favorites, leave comments to get back to them whenever it is convenient to do.
Some farmers are also doing bi-weekly meetings with our team where we go over the major events happening at the farm together.
You can always go back to the video reports if the season is extremely busy (e.g., harvesting) - they are collected in the system on a daily basis.
How can I install the system as soon as possible?
Please fill in this short form. We will reach out to you immediately to start the installation process.