Smart collars on cows are helping Cameron and Anna Edgecombe farm better with fewer staff on the Taieri.
The 50:50 sharemilkers hosted more than 50 people a field day on Maungatua Dairies in Woodside near Outram last week.
Mr Edgecombe said they were in their sixth season on the farm running more than 600 crossbred cows in two herds.
They once employed three full-time staff members, who each worked about 55 hours a week.
The first option was to put on a contract milker on but that would have been complicated by a farm system providing cows a mix of wheat, palm kernel and distiller’s dried grain in the 40 aside herringbone milking shed.
Another option was to put Halter collars on the cows to improve a "below par" reproductive performance in the younger cows.
"We’ve always managed to get good production out of our 2-year-olds but getting them in-calf is the bit we’ve struggled with."
The collars could also help him gain a better work-life balance and be able to step back from the day-to-day running of the farm and enjoy family life.
Halter collars were put on the herd in August this year, during the second week of calving.
The collars had allowed him to reduce some of the hours he worked, particularly not having to pick cows on heat every morning.
He could also take a more targeted approach to which cows got sexed semen and to be more specific on his use of Controlled Internal Drug Release devices, which get inserted into a cow’s vagina to release a hormone to bring it into heat.
His use of up to 170 devices included on all of his 2-year-old cows.
He used about 100 devices this season, targeting only the cows which needed it.
Before using the collars, up to 85% of the cows were in-calf within the first three weeks of the 2023-24 mating season.
An increase in the rate was due to a change in diet for the cows.
The collars provide rumination data, which showed the cows needed more fibre, he said.
Consequently, the cows on winter grass were given more silage, which improved rumination and cycling.
"As soon as we started did that the cycling rates went well above the target."
He used a smart phone to take photos of pasture to help the technology learn the amount of cover available.
It was too early for the technology to be producing any results from its learnings so far, he said.
The collars got the cows to the milking shed more quickly than a staff member could.
Cows began arriving to the shed from 4.30am so a staff member had to be there to milk them.
"You are still relying on a human to get out of bed."
