Three finalists have been shortlisted for this year’s Royal Dairy Innovation Award, the winner of which will be announced at Dairy-Tech on February 7.
The finalists were selected by event organisers the Royal Association Of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) after more than 25 submissions were made online.
The award, which is sponsored by the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Livestock (CIEL), aims to reward a company with a practical product or service which is likely to be the most significant innovation for the future of dairying.
This year’s judges are dairy farmer and competition chair Tim Downes; CIEL’s head of innovation and animal health, Dr. Grace O’Gorman; and Chris Howarth, global sales director for smaXtec, which was last year’s winning product.
Commenting on the finalists, Downes said: “The diverse nature of this year’s entries made shortlisting a final three challenging.
“However, we are confident that our finalists all have products that are very innovative and will make a difference to the UK dairy industry.”
Finalists
National Milk Records (NMR)
NMR has been shortlisted as a finalist for the award with GenoCells – a herd management and herd improvement service centred exclusively around genomic testing.
The main innovative feature is the ability to get individual somatic cell counts (SCC) for cows from a bulk milk sample rather than individually sampling each cow during the milking.
This aims to simplify managing sub-clinical mastitis, bulk somatic cell counts (penalty bandings) and selective dry cow therapy.
Bimeda
Bimeda is another finalist for the Royal Dairy Innovation Award for ImmunIGY Bovine IgB.
ImmunIGY Bovine IgG is a novel test that checks whether a calf (up to 42 days old) has received sufficient antibodies from the colostrum (IgG levels).
The blood test uses a lancet and directly measures IgG levels using a lateral flow device (LFD), with results in 10 minutes.
Calves receiving insufficient, high-quality colostrum in the correct timeframe will suffer from Failure of Passive Transfer (FPT) and have been shown to be more susceptible to disease and poorer performance in terms of daily live weight gains.
Farms which routinely monitor IgG status have been shown to suffer significantly lower rates of failure of passive transfer, highlighting the importance of monitoring, the RABDF said.
DeLaval
The third finalist is DeLaval for DeLaval Plus – an online platform that uses farm management analysis to give farmers the tools to turn their farm data, including milk data, into easily-understood information.
This aims to help users make fast, accurate decisions that benefit their animals, workforce, and profitability.
In addition to analysing performance, the platform can anticipate future outcomes so farmers can plan and act accordingly.
