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Costa View Farms Saves Hundreds of Hours
Thanks to handheld interrogators and in-ear tags, Costa View Farms, the 6,800-cow dairy, can quickly and efficiently update records, find and treat animals, and boost milk production. What used to take 45 minutes per pen now takes only 15 minutes.
The RFID system is boosting farmers’ productivity. Costa View Farms uses the RFID system to replace a manual, paper-based system which required workers to search for the numbers printed on ear tags. It’s important to get the cows through the process as quickly as possible so they can get water and lie down to be more comfortable. Not only does more comfortable cows means more milk, but now workers can do other things with the time that had previously been spent on visually reading ear tags.
According to RFID Journal, the farm is utilizing an animal identification system (AES) from Valley Agriculture Software. The system uses half-duplex 134.2 kHz transponders embedded in small plastic discs which are inserted in the cows’ ears, three handheld RFID interrogators, headsets worn by workers to hear audible beeps when specific animals are located.
Over 95% of Costa View Farms’ 6,800 cattle have been tagged making it easy to identify cows requiring a regiment of shots, and then document which cows have been treated. An electronic list of shots given is downloaded to the handheld, and as worker passes an animal, the interrogator scans the ear tag, correlates it with the software, then instructions are displayed on the handheld. This process takes 1.5 seconds.
Costa View Farms first started employing RFID four years ago, when it looked like the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture might issue a mandate requiring use of an animal identification system. This has not happened, but the benefits of the system have been evident.
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