Each animal has a numbered collar. The feed station electronically reads the collar number when the calf goes to the feed station. The computer knows what each animal is entitled to, records the visits and what was drunk. You can view individual animals through the hand held device. Its how I knew number 20 wasnt feeding. It started appearing in the 'entitled' list. When I looked at the records for number 20 I could see 0% consumed. When I pushed it up to the station, it refused to drink. As it had been feeding fine up to that point, there was obviously something wrong. One of the others was always on the entitled list but it fed when you pushed it up. Nothing wrong with it other than it was lazy. A pain, but nothing to worry about. It is an amazing bit of kit. When its time to wean the animals, the system reduces the number of feeds automatically against a pre-defined profile. They have two batches of calves in there. The system will have a feed profile, and each animal a start day. So in this case, the second batch is running about 10 days behind the first. The first batch will be on reduced feeds for weaning while the second batch is still getting the full number of feeds. Not sure exactly what the profile is, but you could have something like, day 1-10 1l feeds 5 times a day, minimum gap between feeds 1 hour. Day 11-20, 1.5l feeds 4 times, gap 1 hour. Day 21-30, 2l feeds 3 times, gap 1.5 hours. Day 31-40, 2l, twice, gap 2.5 hours. Day 41-60, 2l, once. Day 61 on, nothing. Nothing for you to do, the computer does the lot. When youre feeding calves on a milk bar, its hard to see if anything is behaving oddly unless its just standing in a corner while everything else is feeding. Also, on a milk bar, one calf could be drinking faster than others and getting more than its share. The auto feeder gives them a set amount, no more.
