Denis and David Bergin currently milk 140 cows on their farm near Fethard in Co. Tipperary, along side a tillage enterprise. They got into milk production back in 2015 and haven’t looked back since. In 2021, the cows produced on average 7,000L milk, with excellent solids of 550kg per cow achieved through good genetics, good husbandry, grassland management and with the aid of a feed to yield system in their milking parlour.

Investment in animal monitoring technology

“We found the breeding season very labour intensive and we wanted to reduce the time involved in monitoring cows during breeding,” David explained. 

After looking at various products in the market place, they choose the SenseHub Heat and Health Monitoring System from Efficient Farm Systems.

“There is a lot of information available pre-breeding with the SenseHub system, which builds up reports on all the cows. It develops a list of cows that have not shown heat since calving (over 30 days).”

David continued; “With this information to hand, we can identify the cows not cycling post calving and put them onto a programme to get them cycling pre-breeding.”

The SenseHub system picks up the cows in heat and builds a graph of the ideal time to inseminate to ensure optimal conception rates.

“We only AI once per day and the system is very beneficial to tell you down to the hour, the best cows to inseminate at that time. These cows are then drafted out for breeding and are ready for the AI man,” explained David.

Significant time savings

“There was no need to tail paint the cows during the breeding season, no need to go out to the field to monitor them and no need to hop up and down in the parlour to see what cows had tail paint removed. SenseHub monitors the cows, tells you what cows to breed and when to breed them. It monitors cows at night when you are not around. It takes the guess work out of the breeding season,” said David.

Health benefits

“Around calving, SenseHub picked up cows that were about to get milk fever and ketosis before they showed up any clinical signs of a problem. The vet is then called before the cow actually gets sick and this is a big help in terms of overall loss in production,” said David.

“We invested in a stomach pump which allows us to give the cow 20L of fluid, once we see a drop in the cows’ health, overall movements, eating times or ruminations. We can then use SenseHub to monitor the cow to assess her recovery. It is a remarkable system,” concludes David.