Description
At Derval, the herd comprises 85 Prim'Holsteins and 75 heifers, with an annual production of 700,000 litres of milk. Derval is a member of the Innovation Research and Development team of the Pays de la Loire Chamber of Agriculture, working with Idele (French Livestock Institute) and the F@rmXP network. As a Digiferme®, new technologies are a key area of interest for the Derval farm. Their use should help to improve the farmer's day-to-day life and guarantee optimised management of the dairy farm. Some examples tested on the farm: - Milk quality and energy consumption: Testing of a "new generation" low-energy consumption and connected milk cooling tank, as part of a project to enhance the value of the farm's energy data. - Monitoring the operating costs of technologies used on the farm: Detecting malfunctions in milking robots and optimising them by monitoring connected water and electricity meters. - Pasture monitoring and management: Drones and virtual fencing are examples of technologies evaluated. - Milk analysis laboratory associated with a milking robot. - Animal behaviour analysis: collars with integrated accelerometers, cameras for viewing the entire dairy cow barn, and developing computer vision algorithms. - Testing of robots on field crops.
