Innovations and trends at EuroTier 2008 // 21 Oct 2008

By Professor Eberhard Hartung, Chairman of the EuroTier Innovations Commission, Christian Albrecht University, Kiel

This year, there are a large number of interesting new and further developments, showing above all that the innovative powers of companies in the agricultural animal husbandry segment are by no means declining. Awardwinning innovative products are highly important for practical farming, and lead to essential improvements, for example in the areas of work management, work performance and work quality. Altogether applicants submitted 243 innovations for appraisal for EuroTier 2008. Many of these could be taken into consideration as a "new product for the applicant" or a "further development by the applicant". Company products that are new or have been developed further for the respective firm are also included in the list of innovations. Prerequisites were that the award-winning innovative products have not been presented before at any other major exhibition or international show. All innovations must be fully operable for EuroTier 2008 and be available on the market within the year 2009. The award-winning products in particular, but also the submissions set out in the list of innovations, represent the ideal guide for visitors to EuroTier 2008 who are specifically looking for innovations. The list facilitates the efficiency of a visit to the exhibition.

The 15 segments from which the awardwinning products were proposed include both young fields such as aquaculture and "classics" such as machinery and equipment for animal husbandry, feeding, and climate control. Further segments include dung and manure removal, energy and environmental engineering, milking and cooling installations, farm inputs, management and accessories, as well as renewable energy sources.

Medal winners

The Gold and Silver medals awarded at EuroTier 2008 reflect the breadth of the respective segments and include the animal species cattle, pigs and poultry. The largest numbers of medals were awarded in the segments of milking and cooling technology and machinery and equipment for cattle and pig husbandry. All the award-winning products must be economically significant for practical applications and bring about essential improvements in work performance, work quality and/or operational safety and reliability.

In the future, animal husbandry will remain at the heart of the conflict of objectives partly existing between husbandry and management systems that are compatible with animal welfare and the environment. Therefore, we need innovations that – taking into account secure sustainability of commercially successful farming – convincingly improve the quality assurance of production and products, enhance the quality and performance of work in agricultural animal husbandry and reduce operating costs. On the other hand, we also need innovations that develop new sources of income for farms which are as self-sustaining as possible or improve the agricultural viability of such areas.

Trends in pig farming technology

The innovative drive of the submissions in the area of pig farming concentrated on the topics of animal monitoring and animal health as well as hygiene, hardware and software for animal housing and housing technology networked on a modular basis. On the one hand, systems that simplify or improve daily checking of the individual animal, especially when kept in large groups, have been (further) developed to promote animal monitoring and animal health.

The submissions in this segment aim to "automate the monitoring eye" and record individual animal behaviour even more precisely and continuously than is possible for farmers using conventional means. Future data gained in this way will represent an ever-more important basis of information for husbandry geared to individual animal welfare. New machinery and equipment will, for instance, enable farmers to identify changes in behaviour and thus diseases in animals as early as possible. On the other hand, the data surveyed can serve to steer or ensure optimal operation of networked facilities, such as for instance, keeping, feeding, and ventilation equipment and systems networked via the ISOagriNET Standard.

Minimising hygiene problems

A further key area in promoting animal health at EuroTier 2008 covers measures to minimise hygiene problems. These include thorough cleaning of the housing floor and systems that essentially facilitate work in the fight against pests and at the same time can assure equally enhanced operational and labour safety – even in places that are difficult to access – as well as a high measure of application reliability and environmental protection. All techniques that allow a high standard of hygiene distinctly reduce the development of possible pathogens and are thus an essential prerequisite for keeping healthy and high-performing animals. What is important here is to observe hygiene principles with – wherever possible automatic – cleaning of the entire housing system.

Many innovative system improvements in the field of feeding aim to enhance feeding efficiency through optimally steered "conservation processes".

Cattle farming trends

In the area of machinery and equipment for cattle farming the innovations at EuroTier 2008 show on the one hand that innovations in the area of mechanical milking have not by any means reached the end of the line yet. On the other hand, for cattle farmers too "automated observation of animal behaviour" is becoming increasingly significant both in housing facilities and out in the open. Furthermore, innovations have naturally also been submitted in the "classic" areas of feeding and manure removal, as well as hoof health. In the segment of calf rearing, innovations at EuroTier 2008 concentrate primarily on providing cows with optimal fitness support directly after calving and replacing labour-intensive methods.

Milking and cooling innovations

The innovations in the field of milking and cooling technology all try to utilise the advantages and technical solutions of automatic milking methods for conventional milking parlours. Here further developments right through to individual quarter milking represent a crucial challenge. Technical solutions such as milkflow-controlled pulsation or avoidance of air inclusions are becoming ever more important. In the same way, attempts are being made with the latest developments to rule out the transmission of udder pathogenic germs between the udder quarters. In the area of automatic milking methods, developments still aim to make the milking cluster fitting operation more efficient and thus ensure a distinct improvement in fitting safety and reliability.

Increasing attention is being paid to practicable and as far as possible automated determining of milk ingredients, as this allows conclusions to be drawn regarding health, demand-adapted feeding, performance and oestrus status. Substantial potential is still available here, especially in the application of such techniques to improve herd management.

With the aid of behaviour and movement analyses, the animals themselves are increasingly being used as a "sensor" in order to recognise deviations from normal behaviour patterns and/or from the targeted performance and quality parameters as early as possible. Movement, activity and rest behaviour in conjunction with physiological data and individual animal identification serve here to monitor the animal health status and other data. Appropriate techniques and technologies can be exploited for dairy cattle, to identify problems in the mus-culo-skeletal system – hoof diseases are regrettably still very significant in dairy cattle keeping – as well as metabolic disorders after calving. The systems presented are increasingly convincing through their complete integration into the respective herd management programme and practice-driven implementation and thus lead to substantial facilitation of herd monitoring, above all for farms with relatively large animal stocks.

In the field of manure, removal work is continuing to focus on optimising the most thorough possible cleaning of slatted floors in order to ease the work load by comparison with manual cleaning, to reduce the risk of slipping and to minimise hoof soiling. Cutting the labour time required while at the same time securing quality of the work remains a constant goal in the field of (automatic) feeding. Innovations here target complete and automatic removal and mixing of feed as well as transport and presentation as a system solution. Poultry farming technology By contrast with EuroTier 2006, the poultry segment is back in full force at EuroTier 2008, as reflected in the innovations submitted. This time innovations are concentrated especially on handling the "freshly produced product". This is because for optimal production management it is increasingly important to have the most up-to-the-minute information possible about production performance and product quality. These data allow the earliest possible and automatic allocation of quality categories that are becoming increasingly significant in product marketing.

Furthermore, of course, gentle treatment of the product and resulting reductions in product losses are an important topic in considering the efficiency of installed machinery and equipment. When it comes to hardware used for production, increasing attention is already being paid during product development to ensure that the technology applied is as efficient as possible and can be cleaned and disinfected thoroughly.

Other trends in technology

In the area of bioenergy it is becoming apparent that the field of local energy supply will gain distinctly in importance in future, so that agriculture as a biomass producer and energy user must be led towards a stronger, more coordinated "community". For this, both technical innovations and efforts in society are necessary. The trends selected by way of example and the innovations