חדשנות ישראלית

The late Eli Peles, an inventor and engineer from Kibbutz Afikim, noticed that as the kibbutz dairy farm expanded, the average milk yield per cow decreased. If in a small farm, the farmer is in daily contact with his cows giving them optimal care, in the large modern farm, salaried employed workers perform most of the tasks without personal attention. This has had far-reaching ramifications on the cows’ fertility, productivity, health and nutrition and led to serious financial losses for the farm. Peles foresaw the global dairy industry’s future and sought to provide professional tools that would be better suited to the successful management of large dairy farms. 
Afimilk’s system gives the farmer access to the information necessary in order to make managerial decisions that improve the farm’s profitability. The product is made up of an array of sensors and measuring devices attached to the cow that monitor and record data and that enable the farmer to detect various scenarios. For example, a behavior meter monitors the cow’s physiological activity and the length of its rest time in order to detect estrous cycles and other health-related parameters; an electronic milk meter gathers data about the amount of milk and the rate of milk release in order to assess the cow’s productivity, its state of health and to evaluate the dairy farm’s milking routine while providing warnings of irregularities in the cows health; a milk analyzer measures the milk’s components to assess its quality and the cow’s nutritional state; and a milking controller performs automation and supervision of the milking process itself and assists in safeguarding the health of the udder.
The range of data gathered by the measuring devices during the cow’s daily routine are transmitted to a data analysis system that provides the farmer with results and warns of cows in need of treatment; assists in forecasting and planning of the herd and in managerial control. Integration of these modern managerial tools into the dairy farm has significantly raised its level of professionalism, lowered costs and dramatically improved farms’ profits.
Afimilk has representatives around the world and business partners in every country with a growing dairy industry – fifty countries on five continents.