Innovative vets adopts agri-tech for early dairy disease detection

As milk prices decline, along with recurring and emerging diseases and pressures to meet sustainability goals, Nantwich Farm Vets are working with ag-tech innovators to identify diseases earlier, aiming to create more efficient, profitable and successful farming systems.

The next year is offering a challenging time for the dairy industry, reflects Phil Cullinan, Business Development Manager of Nantwich Farm Vets, noting that farmers are losing 6-8 pence per litre for their milk and facing additional pressures with disease and targets.

“There’s the constant challenge of things like TB and Johne’s, then there’s emerging diseases like bluetongue, which we don’t really know what kind of impact they might have.

“There’s also ever more pressure coming on the sustainability side of things; what processors and supermarkets are asking farms to do, and how they can continually develop to achieve the broader industry goals handed down by the government to retailers and processors.

“Juggling all of that is a massive challenge, along with the day-to-day on-farm challenges of staffing and weather”.

However, despite increasing challenges, Phil remains positive that agri-tech innovations could lead to new ways of working, improving animal welfare, and increasing efficiency.

Taking a preventative approach

When it comes to animal welfare, proactive measures can help detect disease earlier – which reduces suffering and contains infectious spread.

Nantwich Farm Vets is using its Agri-TechE membership to partner with several companies to find new ways to take a preventive approach. From ‘sniffing’ out diseases from gases released from animals, to taking tissue samples for on-farm diagnostics, and AI body monitoring. Agri-tech offers various solutions to get an earlier handle on livestock disease.

For instance, the team is working with RoboScientific, a business that uses volatile organic compound sensors to detect diseases in livestock using breath samples.

By matching the breath sample to on-farm vet assessments, Nantwich Farm Vets is working to corroborate and expand RoboScientific’s dataset.

A breath sample is taken automatically by a machine as the calves feed from automatic milk feeders. “We’re currently in a development phase, but the hope would be that the farmer gets an alert early on in the disease process enabling earlier – and therefore likely more successful – treatment, as well as fewer knocks on calf growth and less antibiotic use. There are lots of benefits,” says Phil.

Additionally, Nantwich Farm Vets has been working with Vet Vision AI to use data to inform decision-making, with the aim of promoting this as a new service to their clients.

Phil explains that on one of their farms, AI cameras have been installed to monitor different parameters between two sheds. The goal is to analyse the data to guide future investments, identify small improvements, and enhance their business operations- caring for the cows and increasing efficiency.

On-farm rapid tests

Following this year’s Agri-TechE REAP Conference, Phil Cullinan also connected with one of the Start-up Showcase businesses, ProtonDX, which has developed an on-farm rapid test to diagnose diseases in under 30 minutes.

The veterinary team has supported the start-up in assessing where the technology could be useful.

“In terms of disease identification and reducing antimicrobial use, that presents another challenge for farmers, which is connected to human health. Some of the new technologies can help farmers to farm more effectively.”

Keeping the consumer in mind

Looking ahead, Phil emphasises that gaining consumer buy-in will be essential for both farmers and vets.

“Consumers, I think, are becoming more aware of what they’re doing and therefore farmers and vets are going to have to make sure that we’re able to deliver a product that is acceptable from the point of view of animal welfare, economics, and environmental sustainability,

“We as a business want to keep growing as an independent vet practice that’s thriving. We want to keep working with the kind of farmers that are going to be around in 20 years, and that can weather the additional pressures that are coming their way.

“The UK has committed to carbon targets and ultimately a legally binding target of Net Zero by 2050. So, there’s going to be more pressure on farmers, and as vets, we want to be best placed to advise them on the kind of things that we can help them with to achieve the targets that are going to be put on them, ultimately, by the processors and the people that are buying their milk.”

Nantwich Farm Vets is eager to partner with other agri-tech businesses.

“If there are any companies that are looking at agri-tech and thinking, ‘how can I get my product to the next stage? I’m interested in doing something to do with dairy cows’, then we’d be very interested in hearing from them”.

You can get in touch with Phil Cullinan here.