Agricultural drone use soars among NZ contractors
Use of agricultural drones by contractors in New Zealand is soaring.
Drawing on a database of local and international dairy bulls, the Good Bulls app allows bulls to be sorted on Australia's three breeding indices: balanced performance index (BPI), health weighted index (HWI) and type weighted index (TWI).
Up to 50 filters can be used to find bulls that match a farmers breeding objectives. Bulls can be filtered by any trait (e.g. protein, cell count, fertility or mammary system) or by semen company, pedigree, genetic characteristics and other factors.
The app provides detailed ABVs on each bull, making it easy to compare between bulls and shortlist bulls of interest. Shortlisted bulls can be exported to a trusted advisor to facilitate semen purchasing decisions.
Dan Knee, who milks 400 cows at Toora, Vic was one of the test users in the app development.
"The app is great," he says. "It makes it quicker and easier to identify bulls with the traits that are important to me. It has turned a job that once took hours into a simple, fun task."
Sarah Saxton, from the Australian Dairy Herd Improvement Scheme (ADHIS), says the app would be updated twice a year with the April and August release of Australian breeding values (ABVs).
The app is available for iPhone and Android phones and can be used on tablets.
