CowManager at Singing Brook Farms

Photos (left to right): Greta Snider Halahan of Singing Brook Farms oversees the farm’s CowManager system; Singing Brook Farms in Imler, PA was established in 1951; Mitzi, the herd’s highest producing cow, showing off her CowManager tag just after herd check

In August of 2019, the staff of Singing Brook Farms in Imler, PA decided to install CowManager, the four-in-one heat, health, rumination, and location herd monitoring system sold and serviced by Premier. After about one year of utilizing the system, they have discovered new efficiencies and opportunities for the operation.

Owned in partnership by father and son Bruce and Ross Snider, Singing Brook milks 290 cows. Approximately 300 cows and heifers on the farm have CowManager ear tags. Greta Snider Halahan, daughter of Bruce, oversees the CowManager system as part of her duties to manage the animals from a reproductive protocol and procedures standpoint.

How It’s Used

Currently, Singing Brook utilizes CowManager’s Fertility and Health modules. The Fertility module provides data on heat intensity and heat stage for timely insemination, and the Health module provides early disease detection based on individual cow behavior.

“The fertility module is my favorite,” said Halahan. “Not only has CowManager helped our numbers from a repro standpoint, but I also have more confidence in making decisions about individual cows. Managing timed A.I. as a whole herd isn’t practical for us—this helps us put our resources and manpower towards the right cows. Our repro numbers are the best they’ve been in 8-9 years!” Halahan said that their milk production also has improved every month, and they hope for continued growth.

Flexibility in Management

The CowManager system provides Halahan and Singing Brook with flexibility in how they manage the cows. Halahan lives in Lebanon, PA, about two and a half hours from Singing Brook, with her husband and two- and three-year-old sons. Outside of her involvement with the farm, she serves as a speaker for agricultural organizations such as Farm Credit, Dairy Girl Network, and others, presenting on communications and personality as they relate to agricultural work. Thanks to the CowManager app and desktop program, she is able to keep an eye on everything from home and notify on-farm staff as necessary. Halahan travels to the farm routinely for herd checks, when the CowManager tags are also checked and receive maintenance as needed.

“It’s really cool how in our situation CowManager has allowed me to get involved with the farm remotely, and it has helped us to transition plan,” said Halahan.

Training Farm Employees

Halahan said that she would love to add the Nutrition module to their system eventually, as it can help cows achieve maximum health and milk production by tracking whether or not an animal maintains stable eating and rumination. However, she wants to focus on using and implementing the tools they have now before expanding. Every employee on the farm has access to the CowManager app and data. Even if they don’t use it for technical applications, milkers, calf feeders, and others are able to look up basic cow information. In the coming weeks and months, Halahan plans to have a Spanish-speaking trainer from Select Sires work with Singing Brook’s Hispanic milkers to provide them with the knowledge they need to maximize the benefits of the Health module.

“CowManager shows us when a cow is sick before we can see something wrong, and we want to train our milkers to discover what is wrong when that alert comes up that the cow is flagged as sick,” said Halahan. “This will allow us to intervene earlier.”

Reducing Uncertainty

Halahan feels that CowManager takes away uncertainty from the farm, whether that’s the uncertainty of human error or the uncertainty of a pandemic.

“It’s a labor unit that is consistent,” she said. “We split up the herdsman duties, and it takes a whole skillset off the table that we don’t have to hire for anymore. It has to be right every day, and we can trust CowManager.”

In regards to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Halahan said, “Without the CowManager system, there are probably things we would have worried about that we don’t have to with the system. If anyone would have gotten sick I could have managed from the system. We are not as subject to personnel.”

CowManager also helps Singing Brook notice changes or issues on the farm and react accordingly. One time the system showed that all of the heifers came into heat at the same time. Knowing something was wrong, they went out to check and discovered that the water was broken. They were able to fix it quickly thanks to the alert.

When asked what he likes best about the CowManager system, Halahan’s father, Bruce Snider, said, “Getting the cows bred—there’s no other explanation. It sees cows that you’d think aren’t coming into heat, cows that we’d never know.”

Easy to Learn

After installing the system and initially inserting the sensor tags, Halahan said that the CowManager learning curve has been fairly easy. She said that Elizabeth Ziegler, Premier Reproductive and Monitoring Systems Specialist, was a great help in learning to read, understand, and act on data “After initially installing the system, we still went out and checked the cows at first, but we trust the system now. We are also better at recognizing trends,” said Halahan.

From time to time, CowManager users experience instances of poor Internet connection or routers going down. Halahan reports that their routers have gone down twice since they’ve had the system, but “any time we’ve had trouble and couldn’t fix it ourselves, we’ve called Liz and she quickly got it back up and running.”

Higher Level Use

Halahan said that she feels comfortable and confident in CowManager and the manner in which they currently use the data it provides. Now, she wants to start some projects to dive deeper into the data and impact the farm in new ways. She plans to work with Michelle Cornman, Premier Dairy Coordinator, and Steve Hoover, Premier Reproductive Service Specialist, to more strategically breed the animals. She wants to increase profitability and keep the heritage of cow families that her family has taken pride in for generations.

“We have the basics done, and now we can do something with the data. We can build on the profitability of the heifers we’re putting on the ground and maintain the heritage of some of the cow families we have on our farm.”

No Regrets

Halahan said that Singing Brook invested in CowManager during a tough economic time, but the investment has been well worth the perceived risk at the time.

“CowManager is probably the best investment we’ve made in a long time. How much would you have to pay a herdsperson to do what this does? How much would you have to pay an individual who has that skill set? It’s one of the most skilled and expensive pieces.”

SALE

To support producers facing challenges caused by COVID-19, Select Sires and CowManager have partnered in offering unprecedented discounts on CowManager systems. Your Premier representative can provide details about these discounts, which will be available until September 2020!

Offering four modules, the CowManager system brings valuable data from a computer microchip in an ear tag to your fingertips. Fertility

Maximized profits with timely insemination. Providing reliable data about heat intensity and heat stage.

Health

Early disease detection based on individual cow behavior.

Nutrition

Maximum health and milk production with stable eating and rumination.

Find My Cow

Find cows easily and save time with the user-friendly cow locator.