How cow collars saved 150 hours of labour in breeding season - Farmers Weekly

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How cow collars saved 150 hours of labour in breeding season - Farmers Weekly

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A small Welsh dairy farm run by father-and-son team Tomos and Ifan Ifans at Tyddyn Cae, near Pwllheli, Gwynedd, deployed 400 SenseHub-Allflex cow collars ahead of the 2025 autumn breeding season and saved approximately 150 hours of labour during the breeding period — paying back the £40,868 investment in just over two years. The farm milks 400 autumn-calving cows and recently established a second herd of 200 spring calvers on a nearby holding. Per Ifan Ifans: "The tie of checking two blocks would have been too much of a burden on my time… It tells us everything that is going on with the cows 24 hours a day. I no longer need to monitor heat detection visually – the technology is doing the work for us, and that frees up my time to get other work done [with the new spring-calving herd]." Per Osian Hughes, Farming Connect dairy officer: "The savings in labour and sweeper bulls mean the cost of the collars will be covered in just over two years." The motivation: the Ifanses already had a tight 9-week calving block (down from 12 weeks) and were expanding to a second herd. Visual heat checks were already time-consuming, and the expansion would have made them infeasible without technology. The 18-month trial was conducted as part of Farming Connect's Our Farms network farm project. Each cow wears a SenseHub-Allflex collar that monitors activity and rumination; data is sent at regular intervals via antenna to the farm computer or smartphone. When peaks in cow activity and dropped rumination are detected, the system flags the cow as bulling. Heat detection is now as simple as checking the computer for alerts and holding back cows listed for checking and insemination. Three Hereford sweeper bulls were eliminated (saving ~£14,060/year including maintenance), and AI is now used throughout the breeding period (cost increase of £800 for 100 extra semen straws at £8 each). Labour savings were £3,675 across the breeding period (147 hours at £25/hour). Operational scale: 400 autumn-calving cows + 200 spring-calving cows; 90% submission rate in first three weeks; 168,000 cells/ml average somatic cell count; 6,800 litres a cow a year at 580 kg milksolids; £40,868 collar investment; 147 hours saved (worth £3,675); £14,060/year saved by removing 3 sweeper bulls. Future direction: Ifan plans to get dedicated collars for the spring herd, as the current set is being swapped between herds.