The dairy industry is challenged with pressures to lower our carbon footprint and our focus needs to provide a solution in all areas of sustainability. LED lighting is one area that can aid in lowering dairy’s carbon footprint by lower electric usage and improving the ROI of the farm. Join Richard Hill of VES-Artex as we explore barn lighting basics and the benefits to your cows, employees and bottom line.

If you’re looking to upgrade or even implement a ventilation system, you want to make sure it pays for itself at some point. After all, cool cows are happy cows, and happy cows add to your bulk tank! Join Huw Jones, Ventilation Specialist with Royal de Boer, as he explains the core principles needed in a ventilation system and how to find the right strategy for your facility, all while keeping ROI in mind.

To study something, we must be able to classify it and categorize it. You may have heard that dairy barns are like snowflakes – there are no two alike. Join Dr. Mario Mondaca of VES-Artex on his journey to try and parametrize barns into the most important facility parameters and how they affect ventilation design.

Please join Peter Manneke, Territory Sales Manager for Europe, Middle East & Africa for VES-Artex for a webinar on the basics of heat stress.

Simply put, if your cows are experiencing heat stress, your production, reproduction, cow flow, and in turn bottom line, are going to suffer. This presentation will focus on how heat stress occurs in a barn, how to monitor your cows’ behavior when the temperature is rising and tangible heat abatement strategies to put in place to keep your herd cool and comfortable, before it is too late.

Join VES-Artex’s Key Account Manager, Joel Hornby, for our first webinar of 2023. Joel will provide solutions for avoiding ventilation KPI killers. Sometimes the key to success is knowing what not to do and then determining the best solution. In providing an animal-centered environment for your dairy, specific considerations need to be given to the effects of weather, building structure and facility layout and of course, the cows themselves. Whether you are building a new facility or retrofitting an existing facility, plan to begin with the end in mind and do it the right way the first time.

Smart dairy farming systems generate a large amount of data that can help farmers monitor barn environmental conditions, milk production, feeding, and reproduction cycles of cows. There is also growing interest in the individual-level monitoring of cow behavior in group housed cattle. Dr. Borbala Foris of the University of British Columbia Animal Welfare Program will highlight some of the latest research on promising new data streams such as social and grooming behavior that can provide insights into the experiences of individual cows living in a herd and how this impacts their welfare and productivity.

Sustainability goals are fast emerging from industries, companies, and individuals, with varying language and science guiding these goals.

Join Dr. Erin Cortus of the University of Minnesota for our latest webinar! The aim of this presentation is to increase our comfort and confidence in conversations about sustainability, the Net Zero Initiative and general environmental stewardship as it relates to dairy production – both within and external to the dairy industry.

Kewaunee county in Wisconsin has the second largest number of cows, per acre, of all the counties in the eastern US. It also has a geologic base of fracture bedrock, which makes it highly susceptible to well contamination events. That, along with being located immediately adjacent to the outdoor tourism center of Wisconsin, has led to public conflict and rancor.

Dr. Don Niles, Dairy Operations Manager for Pagel’s Family Businesses will discuss the Kewaunee/Door County farming community’s resolution to own their own story and establish greater trust and cohabitation between the agricultural and non-agricultural communities on their peninsula.

Please join Huw McConochie of Zinpro for our next webinar. The cow evolved to occupy an environment very different to the one which we provide her. This environment challenges her physiology. Although big improvements have been made to enhance the cow’s environment, there are still improvements that can be made on most dairies to alleviate many of these challenges without impacting the efficiency of work routines. In fact, an environment that has a positive effect of health and welfare can even enhance operational efficiency. Problem cows often consume extra resources in terms of employee time and the occupation of a barn slot that would. Through changes to design and management we can meet some important sustainability goals – Barn slots occupied with healthy, productive and long-lived cows.

Join us for our next webinar where we will explore modern day milking system technology and automation and its potential to address present day challenges facing dairymen in the harvest of milk. Daniel Vander Heiden of DeLaval will address what is seen as the primary challenge (labor) and how technology can help alleviate some of the stress of these challenges. Together, we will also review the technologies, primarily rotaries and robots, as they exist today, but will also preview potential labor saving opportunities that may be adaptable to these technologies. Additionally, Dan will also cover different farm management considerations, farm vision/mission & family dynamics and how they may lend themselves to the best technology adaptation. Finally, no comparisons would be complete without considering the financial ramifications of a potential equipment decision. To that end, Dan will discuss the capital requirements and work some Return on Asset examples.

The back of the barn is where your herd eats, lies, drinks, walks and lives the majority of their lives – make sure it’s as comfortable as possible! Dr. Mike Wolf, consulting veterinarian for VES-Artex, will walk us through the freestall barn and provide tangible suggestions to improve the comfort of your cows for both the short and long term.

A new frontier is here! Terry Canning, CEO and Co-founder of CattleEye will discuss how far we can go with machine vision and if it could eventually become a complete replacement for wearable animal health precision solutions. He will also delve into why cows may be hiding something but AI can spot it.

Bringing cows to the parlor as clean and as relaxed as possible is fundamental for improving or maintaining excellent udder health. “What do you see” when walking a dairy facility that can impact the overall milk quality and how to manage around these issues? Dr. David Reid of Rocky Ridge Consulting, LLC will go over some basic dairy stockmanship and cow handling skills that can significantly improve cow cleanliness when cows enter the parlor.