Recently, Ryan Pearcy, Turntide’s director of product marketing for sustainable agriculture joined VES-Artex to share insights on integrating and optimizing data streams to help drive animal-centered environments on dairies using connected technologies. Turntide Technologies is at the forefront of dairy environment technology. The organization is responsible for DairyBOS®; the SMC Smart Motor; and the all-new Turntide TX Motor, all of which power some of our most popular ventilation and dairy environment solutions and produce actionable data streams that make operations more effective, efficient and sustainable.

Recently, Ryan Pearcy, Turntide’s director of product marketing for sustainable agriculture joined VES-Artex to share insights on integrating and optimizing dairy data streams to help drive animal-centered environments on dairies using connected technologies.

What Are Data Streams?

Let’s start by unpacking what optimizing data streams really means. As an example, let’s say a dairy utilizes digitally connected ventilation, lighting, soaking and milk production systems, and streamlines the information from each of those aspects into a digital tool. Each of those would be considered a “data stream” and can help dairy producers not only make choices and decisions that make their operations and animals better, but also more profitable and sustainable.

According to Pearcy, the prevalence of data streams will only continue to increase with digital integrations with on-dairy tech such as ear tags, collars, cameras, sensors and other digitally connected gauges. This technology is aimed at improving overall cow well-being, but also at making decisions in an automated manner.

The Role of Data in Decision-Making

When making decisions based on data streams, it’s critical to consider correlation and causation. In many current dairies, there are significant animal-focused data streams in comparison to facility level dairy data streams outside of items like water meters and PLCs.

Pearcy argues that it’s critical that in the future, it’s not only critical for dairy organizations to maximize the overall breadth of data that’s being pulled-in and monitored, but it’s equally important to make sure that digital tools are being utilized to help dairies make quick, smart decisions.

“There are dairies that I've visited, where literally they have one day a week, the head manager just goes in office, locks themselves away and just starts typing out on Excel spreadsheets and transferring, as you can imagine, that is time and that is money and more and more and more what's most important to dairyman,” Pearcy said.

That’s not a recipe for long-term success. Instead, using tools like the Intelligent Barn, which uses predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to help connect different data points and make decisions will make your cows happier and more productive, as well as the on-dairy staff.

“Using these tools provide more time that I can do something else, whether it's on the farm or if I can go now, I've got more time to go see my kids' baseball game, or I can work on buying the next farm to be able to scale up,” Pearcy said. “All of those things have a very intrinsic, powerful motivation to a customer.” To watch a recording of Pearcy’s full webinar, make sure to visit this link. Short on time and on the go? Check out our new podcast, Dairy Intelligent, where you can hear an interview with Ryan on this same topic! Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream your podcasts.