Reduce Effort (Reduce Cost)

Remove Capital Impediment

Meter Purchase is a large capital impediment for the commercial farmer who has not recorded before – on the recorder based system a farmer with a 20 unit parlour would have to buy 20 meters - a capital outlay of €3,000 (@ €150 ea) for meters. On top of this he would have to pay somewhere between €13 - €16 per cow/year for the recorder charges for the year. We needed to come up with a system that better utilised the meters.

 

Reduce Labour Content

Recorder and Office costs – with the Irish economy forging ahead means labour related costs are under increasing wage pressures. The “recorder” based system of manual recording is not sustainable going forward as, a) its proving difficult to recruit and retain recorders and b) Irish labour costs continue to increase.  We cannot grow the existing customer base with this current recorder based model and if anything the numbers of herds/cows in Milk Recording is likely to decline if status quo is maintained.

 

We found the electronic meter/system for DIY Milk Recording from Tru Test addressed most of these issues. It provided a very favourable alternative to the existing Manual (Recorder based) method of recording cows in Ireland. ICBF with Dairygold Co-op researched and trialled the system in 2004 and 2005 with very favourable results from the pilot. (See Table 1. Comparison of Electronic Milk Recoding vs Recorder based Model).The €DIY Service was subsequently launched nationwide in 2006.

Table 1. Comparison of Electronic Milk Recoding vs Recorder based Model

 

Criterion	Recorder Based Model	Electronic DIY
Inconvenience/Hassle	3rd Party in parlour,  manual sampling, writing cow details slows down milking.	No stranger in pit, Farmer controls, meter auto agitates, auto samples, no writing, no spilt milk.
Service Quality – Field	Diff to recruit/retain & manage 600-700 recorders	Select Hi Q techs – easier to manage/motivate
Service Quality – Turnaround	More steps between farm & dbase	Less steps from farm to dbase
Meter Cost/ Utilisation	Utilisation is at best once a month & farmer has to buy	Meter used every test day, No purchase for farmer
Cost of Office Keying	Every Herd has to be keyed	None
Cost Recorder	1 recorder for every test – Ave No. Herds/Recorder in Ireland is 12	1 tech for every 5 tests & he can serve up to 150 farmers