Owl Farm invests in technology to reduce weekly hours worked, create a safer work environment and better animal well-being outcomes, and to provide more accurate farm decision-making.  Investments must increase returns or reduce expenses to maintain balance on our Wagon Wheel KPIs. 

Some of the technology we use at Owl Farm includes:

• Automatic cup removers
• Automatic teat sprayer
• Protrack automatic drafting
• Varichill milk cooling 
• Halo effluent pump management software
• Loader scales
• Tracmap GPS tracking
• Soil moisture and temperature probe
• Temperature and Humidity (THI) measurements
• GeneMark DNA parentage
• Halter cow wearables with virtual fencing

Currently we have automatic cup removers and auto teat spray in our 36-bail rotary to allow one person to milk 400 cows while another gets the second herd in and completes other tasks. We invested in Protrack in 2020 to provide a safe work environment for drafting, greater accuracy and workplace flexibility when cows are being selected to draft.

Investment in Halo effluent management, Tracmap GPS tracking and a 600mm soil moisture probe have all helped us to achieve greater accuracy in management decisions to improve environmental outcomes.

In 2021 we invested in DNA samples for the whole herd and continue to sample the calves every year. This ensures that we are correctly identifying and retaining the best genetic replacement calves, and adds value to our calf sales.  Loader scales help us allocate and record feeding levels to achieve greater response to supplements fed.

In January 2020 we installed Halter cow wearables to reduce time spent moving cows, putting up fences and to enable a consistent approach to health and heat animal diagnostics.

We continue to use time and task analysis to evaluate benefits of technology and to enable us to identify and assess areas that would benefit from further investments in technology.