Company says the equipment also helps producers fine-tune calf intake targets and monitor their animals’ well-being
Glacier FarmMedia – Labour savings are the main reason dairy and veal producers express interest in automated calf feeding systems. But once installed, producers find the systems have other benefits too.
At Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, Ont., Grober Nutrition housing animal specialist Pascal Bouilly said that less work isn’t necessarily always the outcome of adding the equipment to a farm.
Producers he works with who have installed automated feeders now take more time fine-tuning calf intake targets, monitoring calf well-being, and making sure the system is running at top effectiveness and cleanliness.
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The difference, Bouilly suggested, is that the work surrounding calf feeding now doesn’t happen twice a day, every day, at exactly the same times.
“You now have more flexibility to manage your work day without having to fit in calf feeding at exactly those times.”
This year’s Ontario farm show featured two companies offering such feeding systems – one a relatively new entrant, based in southwestern Ontario, the other a German company that started manufacturing less technologically advanced versions based on the same concept 50 years ago.
In the Grober Nutrition Livestock Pavilion, a Forster Technik lamb-feeding automated unit was on display next to the Grober Nutrition booth. A short distance away, the company’s North American chief executive officer, Jan Ziemerink, had several of the newest features of the German company’s calf-feeding systems on display.
Visitors to the Grober Pavilion during previous editions of the outdoor farm show in the 2010s used to see a Forster Technik system in action feeding calves, although that feature has been dropped from the schedule.
Next door at the Dairy Innovation Pavilion, a live demo of the Uddermatic Milk Feeding System was available for the second year in a row. Company founder and designer Lester Martin was on hand to explain the features of the unit that was feeding several veal calves from his own farm.
