Bovonic and MSD Animal Health have signed a collaboration agreement to explore integrating QuadSense mastitis detection with the SenseHub Dairy platform, with both companies aiming to address a disease that costs the dairy industry $180 million a year.

Liam Kampshof, founder and CEO of Bovonic, announced the collaboration at Fieldays, saying the product has reached about 6,000 units across 250 farms since launching at the same event two years ago.

Kampshof says QuadSense works in line with the conventional milking cluster.

“We tried to do two things: first, make it very accurate, so we actually took a lot of the science from the robotic milking systems, but brought that into the conventional milking cluster,” he says.

“We tried to make it as easy as possible to adopt: affordable compared to all other options, self-installable by farmers, and it doesn’t really change any process.”

Austin Heffernan, SenseHub Dairy Business Unit Lead at MSD Animal Health, says the mastitis detection piece continues to be a bugbear for the industry.

“There is a $180 million cost to the industry every year,” he says.

“There is a $180 million cost to the industry every year,” he says.

MSD visited farms running QuadSense before moving to formalise the partnership.

“Once we get integrated, can we send a message to the drafting gate and say cows are selected, or get a cow announcement to come in the dairy shed?

“That’s the opportunities we really want to explore from here forward.”

Kampshof says the integration is only worthwhile if alerts are reliable.

“Accuracy’s important, because false positives are the bane of people’s existence in technology.

“If we’re giving you a piece of information, there’s a very, very high likelihood that there’s an activity required with this animal.”

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