RFID Solution for the Large Milking Parlor

Published on Thu, 01/19/2023 - 11:41am

RFID Solution for the Large Milking Parlor.

 Article and photos provided by BouMatic.

 RFID Usage
Individual animal RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has been the key to dairy automation in general and in particular to milking parlor automation. For many years most of the in-parlor identification systems consisted of walk through, walk past or walk-over (in case of leg activity tags) antennas and readers, located at the entry of (each side of) the milking parlor and smart software, assigning the identified animals in the correct sequence to their stall in the parlor.

As herd sizes increase to hundreds and even thousands of cows on a dairy, the impact of ID changes. The emphasis from individual cow management shifts to more herd management. There is less or no possibilities to correctly enter unidentified cows. And then there is just the normal occurrence of an animal in a row on one side of the parlor failing identification or being allocated to the wrong stall.

The use of RFID ear tags can have their difficulties. Due to their reduced size compared to management tags, ear tags perform far less than management tags which leads to reduced reading ranges. On top of this, the relatively low performance of ear tags must “compete” with environmental electrical noise which can further deteriorate ID performance.

PPID
A Per-Point IDentification (PPID) system can offer the dairyman a reliable, tailor-made RFID solution for any herd size, type of parlor or type of tag.

PPID is the ultimate solution for ear tag identification in large batch type and rotary parlors. Due to the relatively small antennas, environmental noise hardly affects ID performance and any not identified animal does not affect reliability of datasets of any other cow.

Depending on the type of stalls, per point antennas and readers can work autonomously for just one milking point or antennas can be multiplexed using one reader per eight milking points.

Here to help
Have questions regarding PPID? From equipment consultants to milk quality specialists, we have a wide range of knowledgeable staff here at BouMatic that can assist you. Contact a BouMatic dealer to learn more.