Monday, 22 October 2018 08:55

Heat detection with no tail paint

Written by  Mark Daniel
Moocall heat monitors cows for heat detection. Moocall heat monitors cows for heat detection.

The latest device from the Irish maker, Moocall Heat, monitors cows for heat detection, centering on a collar worn by the bull to detect his activity as he moves through the herd. 

Moocall is known for its calving sensor — a device fitted to a cow’s tail where it measures movement triggered by labour contractions, then sends the farmer a SMS message when calving is imminent, usually within one hour of the event.

With Moocall Heat, the nature of the mating ritual dictates that as a cow starts to come on heat, the bull will follow and attempt to mount the female. The system monitors the activity and records the number of attempts the bull makes to mount the cow. 

While the female will typically reject the advance, she will be followed by the bull and eventually stand to be serviced. At this point she is said to have entered ‘standing heat’ so the system will send an SMS message identifying the cow by her RFID ear tag to the user’s smartphone, as well as logging the event on the Moocall Breedmanager app.

This notification allows users running dairy and beef operations to record natural mating, but more importantly for AI breeding situations to accurately time artificial breeding and use the AM/PM rule to determine when the cow is most fertile. This level of accuracy also allows the use of semen with higher genetic merit, with a greater chance of conception. 

Says Moocall, “Obviously, getting a cow back in calf during her first cycle will have a major effect on profitability that exceeds the capital cost of the equipment.”

The system also helps identify cows that are repeating, and the number of times they repeat, so identifying cows with underlying problems that are not always obvious. 

The Moocall Breedmanger app also allows the user to determine which cows are cycling, in-heat, inseminated, or in-calf, generating more accurate calving dates and so leading to better planning. In larger herds it’s recommended to fit a collar to one bull for 50 cows.

Moocall Heat also helps identify bulls that are more active, or those under-performing, remembering that up to 20% of all bulls can be infertile or not performing to an optimal level. 

At the same time the system allows an easy switch between natural or AI mating, by collecting all data from the collars and updating the system automatically.

Dairy News visited the Claxton family farm at Killeigh, Co. Offaly, during a visit to Ireland, seeing the system’s  effectivness and ease of use. 

The family farms 52ha, running a main herd of 50 high genetic merit suckler cows plus 170 young stock, focusing on the Charolais or Simmental breeds, with a small number of numbers of Hereford based cross-breeds. The farm produces high quality calves reared and sold for the quality beef market. 

Son Stephen, studying agricultural science at University College Dublin, discovered the system and introduced his father Desmond, a self-confessed technophobe, to monitoring the cows’ heat cycles.

Stephen says the ability to detect cows coming on heat early and with high accuracy has changed the way the business selects semen for artificial breeding. It now spends much more on premium genetics to improve the quality of the calves being born. In the next season, the farm will send away calves averaging 30kg heavier than this year’s crop.

And he can now pick out cows previously thought to be good breeders which, by their size show all the signs of being in-calf when they are actually empty; this allows early vet intervention or culling. 

Early heat notification will easily outweigh the cost of the system, and yield greater outputs from the same area, Stephen says.

And the initial use of the Moocall calving monitor paid for itself by saving just one high-value calf. 

Father Des can use the system without calling for help from Stephen.

More like this

The future of beef breeding

Progeny testing at Pāmu’s Kepler farm in Southland as part of Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Informing New Zealand Beef programme is showing that the benefits of hybrid vigour could have a massive impact on the future of beef breeding.

No limits for breeders

Breeding cows without a farm may sound a little unorthodox to some - but for Isaac and Emma Kelsen, it means they get to experience the best of both worlds.

Featured

Australia develops first local mRNA FMD vaccine

Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.

NZ household food waste falls again

Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.

Editorial: No joking matter

OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.

National

All eyes on NZ milk supply

All eyes are on milk production in New Zealand and its impact on global dairy prices in the coming months.

Machinery & Products

Leader balers arrive in NZ

Officially launched at the National Fieldays event in June, the Leader in-line conventional PRO 1900 balers are imported and distributed…

JDLink Boost for NZ farms

Connectivity is widely recognised as one of the biggest challenges facing farmers, but it is now being overcome through the…

New generation Defender HD11

The all-new 2026 Can-Am Defender HD11 looks likely to raise the bar in the highly competitive side-by-side category.

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Full cabinet

OPINION: Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter