Smart Dairies

Smart Dairies

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report, I’m Tim Hammerich.

Over time our homes have become a lot smarter through technologies like Nest that optimize our environments. Could similar technologies be applied to dairy farms? Theresa Pistochini is the engineering manager at the UC Davis Western Cooling Efficiency Center.

Pictochini… “There was a solicitation that was looking for novel ways to save electricity and water in dairies. And so we put together essentially a proposal to test several technologies.”

The team reviewed a lot of high tech solutions, but they just required too much investment on the part of the farmer.

Pistochini… “What immediately hit me was that the typical fans and sprayers used, the controls to operate those - as we visited dairy after dairy - were just completely different. As far as what temperature they were being turned on at, how frequently sprayers were spraying, how fast fans were going. And it occurred to me that there is an optimal answer at any particular weather condition, the amount of air flow and water spray needed to cool cows. And so I thought really here's the opportunity to use existing equipment and to make a much better control system for it.”

This technology is one of many developed by the universities that are looking for commercialization partners.

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