Moussa Saab
Herd manager
Bekaa Valley, Lebanon
The two biggest challenges Moussa Saab, herd manager at Sun Dairy Farm, has to face, is to reach a high conception rate and to intervene quickly in case of cow health problems. He now has an effective solution to easily overcome both of these challenges. “This motivates me on a personal level and makes me love my work even more than I did before.”
Sun Dairy Farm stands out beautifully against the panorama of the snowy peaks of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. In this fertile valley in eastern Lebanon Moussa and his employees keep 500 cows, of which 350 are dairy cows, 100 are young stock and the rest are calves. Since 2017 they have been using Nedap CowControl with SmartTags in addition to day-to-day management. “The system offers me a structured daily routine and focus on the most important tasks and priorities,” Moussa explains. “The first thing I do when I arrive at the farm is to check the overview in CowControl to see which cows have a health or heat attention.” These data give Moussa a grip on the two major challenges at Sun Dairy: improving reproduction results in general – and conception rate in particular – and improving health status.
“Previously, we always had to track down cows in heat and put patches, chalk or paint on them. However, this method was never accurate or reliable enough and that was a major problem”, Moussa looks back on the period before they used CowControl. “Thanks to CowControl’s heat detection, that problem has now been solved. Moreover, the monitoring of eating and rumination behavior makes it possible for us to intervene in a timely and effective manner if we see abnormalities. That is a quantum leap forward for us. ” This insight into his animals has ensured that Moussa knows and understands his cows better and knows exactly when something is wrong. “It gives me confidence and peace of mind knowing that I did all my duties towards my herd,” Moussa says gratefully.
In practice, the herd manager sees that CowControl registers a change in behavior of a cow within four to eight hours, if something is wrong. For example in the case of cows with ketosis or an early stage of milk fever. Moussa will immediately receive an alert. This offers certainty for the manager: “That is of great value, especially for the group of fresh cows. The data and indications provided by the system cannot be obtained in any other way. With the Nedap system, I detect problems eighty to ninety percent faster than conventional, visual observation. I am convinced that CowControl’s health awareness is the fastest possible way to intervene. In my opinion there is no faster method.”
Sun Dairy Farm did not go overnight in purchasing the system and has implemented it gradually. Moussa explains how the start-up went: “We initially started with a hundred SmartTags and first tested for a period how accurate and effective it worked. The system quickly proved itself and the results motivated us enormously to increase the number of cows with SmartTags.” All cows are now equipped with a SmartTag. “If we had the space to increase the number of cows, we would certainly invest in a thousand SmartTags,” Moussa concludes with a laugh.
