“CowManager Saves Us a Lot of Time”

Decision to Start Working with CowManager

Frank tells about how the collars he used to detect heat wouldn’t be sufficient – “We would see a few cows, but not all of them.” But then he came across CowManager and decided to give it a try: “We bought 50 tags. It was very easy to install, it’s a plug and play system. I put the router on the wall, logged in on the computer. All we needed was internet and off we were running! After a few months we added more tags to cover the whole herd.” At the moment, all his cows have a CowManager sensor, including dry cows and heifers which need to be bred. “At 12 to 14 months we add CowManager to our young stock.”

Another benefit Frank discovered as soon as he started working with CowManager, was its constant ease of use and reliability. “You don’t have to put it in the right place all the time. It just goes in the ear. You don’t have to place it on a certain place on the neck, you don’t need to add that extra weight. And I really like all three modules; Nutrition, Fertility and Health.” CowManager gives accurate and timely alerts, a cow in heat will never be missed and the Health Module and Nutrition Module allow dairymen to work preventively. Frank explains about the modules: “With the Fertility Module you don’t have to look for heat anymore and timing the insemination is possible. The Health Module alerts us to sick cows before we see the critical signs and the Nutrition Module we use to check on sick cows.”

Eight Years of Using CowManager

Frank Jopp is using CowManager since 2013 and uses all three modules. He says: “It’s excellent, otherwise I wouldn’t have kept adding tags. We’re not doing visual heat monitoring anymore, zero. We breed exclusively with CowManager. So that saves us a lot of time.” The pregnancy rates on the farm also went up since using CowManager.

When Frank gets a health alert, he checks the cow, takes her temperature, and decides what to do. He strongly believes that with CowManager you can catch sick cows earlier and help them earlier which makes treatment a lot easier and more successful. “We find cows that are getting sick, and we can identify these cows 12 to 24 hours before they show clinical signs. That really helps us catching them early and the earlier we catch them; we can intervene with the easiest treatment. It makes it easier to successfully treat the cow properly.” Furthermore, Frank explains that they use the Health Module especially to find cows that have a displaced stomach.

Amazing Graphs and Support

Frank thinks the graphs in CowManager are great: “The graphs show easy visual information through colors, which helps me make quick decisions”. Also, his son Alex makes great use of them since he is the one in charge of breeding the cows. A job which is considered the most important one at the farm. The clear graphs aren’t the only great thing, according to Frank: “If you have questions, which I only had two or three times in the past 8 years, there is always someone (from the CowManager Support Team) there on the phone.” The Support Team has helped Frank with linking his farm management system to CowManager. Frank says having this integration is a great advantage: “CowManager is linked to my farm management system and all the essential data gets transferred automatically. It eliminates double entry of data and is a really nice feature.”

Future

Now, Frank and his son mainly use and look at the feed factors the Nutrition Module offers, which helps them a lot. Recently, the Nutrition Module was renewed with new valuable insights and alerts. Frank hasn’t had time yet to delve into this but is really interested in the new transition alerts this module presents. He is planning to make it his winter project (when land work isn’t taking up all of his time).

100% Recommended

This is what Frank has to say to all dairymen who are not yet using CowManager: “I cannot understand how you can manage your farm without CowManager. I can’t see myself managing my farm without it. Other systems are not as reliable.” It saves him time, because no visual heat monitoring is necessary anymore and threating sick cows is more successful because they are caught earlier.