Make every sort a better cow experience

 

Touchless sorting reduces disruption and keeps cows moving comfortably.

• Keep sorting uneventful and protect the cow’s routine. Allow cows to move naturally through the sort area without unnecessary stops, hesitation or physical contact with equipment.
• Create positive experiences. Because cows learn from and remember previous experiences, calm, consistent sorting can help reduce hesitation and support smoother future cow flow.
• Sort the exception, not the herd. Nedap’s SmartSort directs only cows that need attention while letting the rest of the herd keep moving, helping employees focus their time where it matters most.

Cows remember.

Despite their tongue-in-cheek reputation to the contrary, current research shows dairy cattle have complex cognitive abilities, including sophisticated learning, memory retention and cognitive and behavioral flexibility.1 That means they learn from their surroundings, recognize patterns and remember what they experience.

So, something as routine as moving through a sort gate can shape a cow’s experience and future responses. A smooth trip through the gate can simply become part of her daily routine. A stressful one can create hesitation, disrupt cow flow and make future handling more difficult.

Your sorting goal isn’t simply to get the right cow to the right place. It’s to do it as smoothly as possible while allowing the rest of the herd to keep moving comfortably through their normal routine.

Here are three rules to create a better sorting experience.

1. Make sorting uneventful

A good sorting experience should be almost unremarkable to the cow. She walks through the sorting area as she normally would, without stopping, hesitating or being physically contacted by equipment. If she needs attention, she is calmly directed to the appropriate area. If she doesn’t, she continues back to the pen.

“You want to provide an experience for the cow that allows her to have a natural movement through the sort gate area,” says Owen Bewley, general manager of North American Dairy Technology for Nedap. “Done right, cows flow freely through it; done wrong, they’re scared, nervous, jumpy – all the bad things that happen when cows are scared.”

That distinction matters because most cows passing through a sort gate don’t need to be sorted. They simply need to return to their pen and get back to eating, drinking, resting and ruminating.

Nedap’s SmartSort touchless sorting is designed around that reality. Rather than making every cow interact with the equipment, it lets normal cow traffic move freely while directing only the animals that need attention. The technology accommodates the cow rather than requiring the cow to accommodate the technology. And it does so quickly and accurately, handling more than 1,000 cows per hour while maintaining over 99% sorting accuracy.

             2.  Protect the cow’s routine

Cows are creatures of habit, and consistency is an important part of good cow management. Every unnecessary stop or interruption can take a cow away from the activities that fill her day.

“Why would you want to stop every cow in a sorting experience?” asks Bewley. “Fundamentally, that’s just the wrong thing to do to a dairy cow. They are creatures of habit. We want cows to do the same thing every day. And when it comes to the exit areas from a milking parlor especially we want calm and consistent flow with no bottlenecks, because any pinchpoint could turn into a backup in the parlor.”

Those small disruptions can add up across the herd and interfere with normal cow movement.

A well-designed sorting process should instead fit naturally into existing cow traffic. This means:

• The cow keeps walking.
• The gate quietly does its job.
• Employees can focus their time on the animals that require attention.

             3.  Create positive experiences 

Reducing stress during handling also supports animal well-being and productivity. Handling stress has been associated with physiological effects including lower conception rates and reduced immune and rumen function.2

Because cows can remember previous experiences, how they are handled today can influence how they respond tomorrow.

A cow that associates an area with an uncomfortable or frightening experience may hesitate the next time she approaches it. That hesitation can affect not only that individual cow but also the animals following behind her, potentially interrupting not only her routine but also the flow of the cows behind her.

Accurate, touchless sorting helps remove one potential source of disruption by minimizing physical interaction between the cow and the sorting equipment. Rather than stopping cows or requiring them to push against equipment, the system allows them to keep moving while directing only the cows that need attention.

The result is a calmer, more consistent experience for the cow and a more efficient sorting process for employees.

“As stewards of the cow and your dairy business, it’s up to us to provide an experience where animals can free-flow and do their thing without slowing them down or forcing them to push through metal to be sorted,” concludes Bewley.

Discover more at nedap-livestockmanagement.com.

Nedap creates Technology for Life: technological solutions that help people become more successful and happier in their professional lives. Nedap’s Digital Twin Technology bridges the physical and digital worlds, offering real-time insights and automation in Livestock, Healthcare, Retail, and Security. Nedap Livestock helps farmers to optimize the performance and well-being of individual cows while minimizing workload and resources. This way, Nedap improves life on the farm for both people and animals, helping to reduce the environmental footprint of dairies worldwide.

Nedap N.V. has a workforce of over 1,000 employees and operates on a global scale. The company was founded in 1929 and has been listed on Euronext Amsterdam since 1947. Its headquarters are located in Groenlo, The Netherlands.