Agriculture 4.0 has also left its mark on the world of feed mixers, which today are more precise, connected and above all allow the discovery of errors in the ration that have sometimes been repeated for decades. Next steps, artificial intelligence and electric power.
Ottavio Repetti
Feeding is a strategic moment in the life of the barn: a phase that can launch the herd towards the peaks of 40 kg of milk per head/day or bog it down in a swamp of problems: digestive, ruminal, at the feet. Studying a correct recipe that is suitable to the characteristics of the different groups of animals – heifers, dry, fresh, very fresh – is certainly the first and fundamental step, but even the best recipe in the world is ineffective if it remains on paper and something completely different arrives in the manger.
It is the responsibility of the breeder or his delegates to respect the prescriptions of the nutritionist and to serve the animals a ration as close as possible to the initial formula, but the tool through which this happens is the mixer wagon. If the wagon does not work well, the ration will not be well mixed and, if the operator makes mistakes, even the best wagon will provide an unbalanced ration: too poor or vice versa too rich in nutrients. In any case, this creates damage: economic, productive or health-related. The latest technologies can help stables, replacing man in some functions that require attention and precision of execution. Finally, we will deal with the latest trends in the field of feeding: not of the animals, but of the wagons themselves.
The turning point of 4.0
Even in the world of unifeed, Agriculture 4.0 has been a booster for digital technologies. Offering machines at prices discounted by more than 50%, as long as they are equipped with telemetry, systems for the collection and transmission of data and the possibility of dialogue with other machines, has brought the sector forward. Pushing everyone, if only, to become aware of the existence of these devices and to evaluate their applicability to their business. At the same time, all manufacturers have equipped their products with kits that make them suitable for obtaining the tax credit and therefore able, precisely, to collect and transmit information on the work carried out, receive tasks and report malfunctions to a remote service. Useful tools for moving to a new way of managing the barn.
Basic equipment
Today a mixer wagon certainly has a weighing system for the loaded material: it is the basis for being able to compose a ration that is at least close to the proportions required by the nutritionist. The operator must check the progress of the work on a monitor, but is usually also alerted by an audible or visual alarm when the loading of an ingredient is almost 100% of what was expected in the recipe. Recipe that is entered into the wagon management electronically, via key or remotely (with wi-fi, sim card or other). Information on processing and mixing times, cutting lenght, loaded ingredients and quantities distributed are transmitted to the barn management system in the same way. They are now basic equipment; they allow you to do a good job, but you can also make serious mistakes. For example, an operator may be a few seconds late in stopping the loading: because he is distracted, or busy doing something else. What on earth is, you may think, ten seconds of delay in stopping the cutter? In reality, given the working capacity of modern cutters, a lot of material is loaded in ten seconds and if the latter is made up of flours or other highly concentraded ingredients, it can irreparably unbalance the ration. The risk increases, of course, in the absence of an audible alarm for the completion of the load. But the alarm is not always enough: most of the farmers we spoke to claim that employees, when in doubt, prefer to exceed the dosage rather than remain scarse. This results in higher feed costs and a not exactly theoretical risk of rumen problems, especially for the most productive animals.
Limiting errors
The alarm system is certainly a great help but, as we have seen, a delay of just a few seconds is enough to load much more than necessary, especially when it comes to ingredients present in the recipe in small proportions. For this reason, some solutions that allow you to remedy, partially or completely, involuntary deviations from the recipe are particularly useful. For example, the function of reversing the motion on the cutters, which allows you to unload all the material that has not yet entered the mixing tank. « With such a device, an attentive operator can load the different ingredients with a level of precision in the kilogram range», says Marco Chiari, head of mixer wagons for Kuhn Italia. And he adds that, thanks to 4.0 technologies, it has been possible to identify errors that had probably been made for decades. «The transmission of data from the machine to the company computer, with the precise weights of each ingredient, allowed us to highlight incorrect behaviors, especially due to excess loading. I remember the case of a stable that, thanks to these devices, solved long-standing foot problems, to which it could not give an explanation. By analyzing the data provided by the wagon, it was possible to ascertain that the ration regularly contained an excess of concentrates, in particular soya and cotton cake».
The alarm, in short, helps; at least as long as the operator diligently carries out his task. To protect against even the most distracted of truck drivers, what we could consider the definitive solution against excess load has been patented: a function that automatically stops the movement of the belt when the set weight is reached. Faresin mixer wagons use it and, although it does not eliminate the risk of excessive loading from silos or telescopic buckets, it is certainly a great help in respecting the dosages.
In some cases, however, it is possible – indeed probable – to make mistakes even when paying the utmost attention. This happens when the characteristics of an ingredient differ significantly from those on which the recipe was designed. A well-known case is that of corn silage: just 5% more water than the nutritionist estimated is enough to reduce the feed for the cows by the same percentage. In this case too, technology has a solution ready: the NIR detector, which a decade ago was miniaturized and made portable, to the point that it can be mounted on operating machines such as forage harvesters, slurry tanks and, indeed, mixer wagons. By analyzing the ingredients that enter the wagon using near-infrared spectrography, the NIR bypasses the problem of the relationship between weight and nutrients, as it is able to determine the content of the different components (fats, proteins, water) of the various foods. It is therefore no longer just the load cell that determines when the quantity of an ingredient is sufficient, but an algorithm, which evaluates the weight with the nutritional power of the food. Given the obvious advantages it entails, the NIR is now offered by every manufacturer and although the cost is high (over 20 thousand euros), it is worth considering purchasing it, since a one percent deviation in the protein content for the ration of a herd of 200 heads entails, over the course of a year, an increase in food expenditure of over 50 thousand euros.
The latest technologies on mixer wagons help, not only to respecting the quantities, but also to better perform the main operations, such as loading and mixing. For the first, there are specific pre-set programs for each product. By selecting them, the working parameters of the cutter are automatically set. As regards mixing, we mention Intellimixer by Sgariboldi: in addition to reducing the preparation times of the mixture, the system relieves the operator from the regulation of the auger revolutions. Thanks to a system of sensors, in fact, it is able to adapt to every need that may arise during the preparation of the unifeed, varying the speed of the augers and thus optimizing the cutting times. Furthermore, Intellimixer avoids overheating of the mix or de-mixing of the ingredients, creating a quality unifeed in less time and with lower consumption. Together with Intelliloader, Intellimixer makes up the Intellitechnology technology, which supervises the work of the wagon from start to finish.
Everything under control
So far, we have dealt with how technology can optimize the work of the mixer wagon by avoiding human errors, making its action more precise and also allowing, thanks to the collection and transmission of data, to verify compliance in the field with what was established in the office. However, there is a second level of action: that of the office. Today, the mixer wagon produces, collects and transmits data. The same is done by milking systems (in particular, autonomous ones, i.e. robots) and of course collars or pedometers, which were created specifically for the purpose of collecting information on the health of the animal and the progress of its menstrual cycle. However, these packages are often disconnected. In other words, they travel on parallel tracks, without ever meeting, unless the farmer starts to group them to obtain an overall picture. However, the first integrated systems are emerging, which are able to manage milking data, feeding data and even information relating to animal health. A real Big Brother of the stable, in short, thanks to which you can keep the overall progress of the herd under control from a nutritional, health and production perspective. Let’s say that we are following the path already taken in extensive agriculture, when from data collection through field equipment (seeders, combine harvesters, etc.) we moved first to DSS (advanced models for data analysis and decision support) and then to FMIS (farm management information system), which are platforms (Xfarm is a typical example) in which data from different sources converge, in order to have a general overview of the company’s activity.
The barn becomes intelligent
The next step, of which we can already see the first signs, involves the management of this enormous mass of data – skimming – no longer being done by humans, but by the machine itself, through artificial intelligence. Organizing data, grouping it by areas of interest, creating logical connections and proposing solutions to the farmer is something that AI is now able to do, so why not exploit it? Faresin is trying to create a system of this type, objectively very advanced, with its AI Feeding. A system that, explains the manufacturer, “integrates artificial intelligence and deep learning, transforming the data collected into optimal strategies to improve the well-being and productivity of your herd. AI Feeding autonomously analyzes company data, proposes solutions to optimize productivity and reduce waste and dynamically adapts to market conditions”, while the less developed version, Web Feeding, limits itself to collecting data from mixer wagons, pedometers, milking systems.
Artificial intelligence, in other words, is able to play a significant part in the decision-making process, obviously leaving the final choice to humans, but proposing advanced solutions, such as changing an ingredient in the recipe to take advantage of a drop in the price of a raw material. A new way of breeding (and farming) destined to become the standard in a few years and in which the mixer wagon, with its cutter and its augers, represents an indispensable hardware piece.
