Two dairy start-ups from Ontario were recently crowned champions of a renowned $3 million business competition in New York State.
In the sixth annual Grow-NY Food & Agriculture Competition, SomaDetect got a $500,000 award and Cattle Scan received a $250,000 prize. Its goal is to establish a food and agricultural innovation cluster in Central New York State, the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier – the areas around Ithaca, Binghampton, Elmira, and Corning.
SomaDetect has created a sensor and software system that gives farmers with accurate milk-based data from each cow at each milking. Real-time automated monitoring of essential dairy quality indicators such as fat, protein, somatic cell counts, and progesterone simplifies on-farm reproductive and herd health decisions, including early diagnosis of mastitis.
“We can use a list of cows that dry off and not treat the ones with the lowest somatic cell counts who aren’t at risk of infection, reducing antibiotic use from 40 to 60 per cent, depending on how aggressive the farm wants to be,” explains Bethany Desphande, the company’s founder and CEO. “We can also do pregnancy monitoring for 18 days to identify open cows.” We can really assist big farms, in particular, ensuring their breeding process is as efficient as possible.”
SomaDetect’s technology is used on roughly a dozen farms in Canada and the United States, ranging from 60 to 4,000 cows, and team members are located in Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Alberta, and the United States.
New York is the fifth biggest dairy producer in the United States, after only California, Wisconsin, Texas, and Idaho, with around 3,500 dairy farms and 630,000 dairy cows. Winning teams must commit to operate for a year in the participating areas.
“Grow-NY is a huge opportunity to reach the farming community in New York and having that validation where they’ve looked deeply at your technology and the value it provides to farmers,” she said.
“We are always looking for innovative farmers who want to work with a new technology that can make small changes to their operation with massive impact on-farm.”
Cattle Scan, located in Guelph, has created a bolus sensor device that analyzes dairy cow biometrics in real time, such as activity, rumination, water consumption, and temperature.
Early disease identification, heat stress alarms, insights into low water intake, calving detection, and reproductive patterns are all provided by the system, resulting in improved herd health and higher production efficiency.
The bolus, which may be placed in the rumen of dairy cows at a young age, is accompanied by a sophisticated algorithm that automatically analyzes the acquired data, according to co-founder and CEO Denis Tokarev.
Cattle Scan has been collaborating with academics from the University of Guelph and the University of Wisconsin to verify the technology, and the company is growing its client base in both Canada and the United States.
“Through Grow-NY we are building momentum in the U.S. as well, and we are partnering with Dairy Farmers of America, one of their largest dairy co-ops who is selling our system,” said Tokarev.
“As the fifth largest dairy producer in the United States and with a diverse landscape of vendors and manufacturers, New York is an easy choice for us (for growth).” Having renowned clientele in New York would open the path for us to expand countrywide in the United States.”
Cattle Scan provides an on-farm trial beginning package for 50 cows for six months, which involves simply the administration of boluses and the plugging in of the antenna. The technology is intended to work in tandem with current farm management systems.
Hypercell Technologies, a Georgia-based start-up that delivers quick point-of-care diagnostics for the food chain, including early detection and control of biological pollutants from production to processing, won the Grow-NY main prize of $1 million.
In the run-up to the live finale in November, all 20 finalists got targeted mentoring from regional business experts. Cornell University’s Centre for Regional Economic Advancement oversaw the competition.
