UW Platteville to study dairy data utilization

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UW Platteville to study dairy data utilization

A University of Wisconsin campus plans to use Dairy Innovation Hub funding and their new robotic milkers to study how to better use the large amount of available data on the farm.

Dr. Tera Montgomery is a professor of dairy and animal science at UW Platteville.  She tells Brownfield modern dairies collect more on-farm data, and farmers need research data in a format they can use. “Anything from animal health and nutrition, animal movement, animal behavior, milk production, all of those kinds of things, it’s just a lot of data and so we have faculty who are taking a look at what’s the best way to use that data and get it to the farmers.”

And, Montgomery says a great deal of the data collected throughout every day in an animal’s life can help tell the farmer’s story to consumers. “What is it that we can say about the individual cows that come through the robots so that consumers can understand a little bit better what a cow, you know, what her day looks like, how we’re treating them, and things like that.”

The research is all through the Dairy Innovation Hub, the joint effort between campuses at Madison, River Falls and Platteville, the dairy industry, and the State of Wisconsin, which provides eight million dollars annually for Dairy Innovation Hub efforts.

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