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, Grober Nutrition Young Animal Specialist Pascal Bouilly told Farmtario that less work isn’t necessarily always the outcome. He said producers he works with who have installed automated feeders now take more time fine-tuning calf intake targets, monitoring calf wellbeing, 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.”
Two companies – one a relatively new entrant local to southwestern Ontario; the other a German company which started manufacturing less technologically advanced versions about 50 years ago – provided this year’s farm show visitors with information about their units.
In the Grober Nutrition Livestock Pavillion, a Forster Technik lamb-feeding automated unit was on display next to the Grober Nutrition booth. A short distance away, the company’s Cambridge-based North American CEO Jan Ziemerink had several of the newest features of the German company’s calf-feeding systems on display. Visitors to the Grober Pavillion during previous editions of the outdoor farm show in the 2010s will recall a live version of a Forster Technik system feeding calves, which no longer takes place.
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 Mildmay-area farm.
