ADK Uses Feed Efficiency for Informed Culling and Breeding
ADK Seeks to Align Environmental Goals with Herd Profitability As farm manager at ADK Farms, Emily Starceski oversees 4,000 cows across three sites in upstate New York. Sustainability is a core foundation for the owners and is evidenced in a number of ways, including the manure digesters they installed to produce valuable natural gas for […]
ADK Seeks to Align Environmental Goals with Herd Profitability
As farm manager at ADK Farms, Emily Starceski oversees 4,000 cows across three sites in upstate New York. Sustainability is a core foundation for the owners and is evidenced in a number of ways, including the manure digesters they installed to produce valuable natural gas for the community. At ADK, they continuously look for modern ways to align their environmental stewardship initiatives with improved herd profitability.
The Missing Link: Data on Feed to Milk Conversion
Historically, identifying low-performing animals with Diminished Milk Value (DMV) was a highly labor-intensive guessing game. Management had to manually walk the pens and visually estimate which cows were unprofitable based on body condition and time in the herd. Because the farm feeds a uniform high-mix ration, they possessed no objective metric to determine which individual cows were efficiently converting that expensive feed into milk. This lack of data made true genetic selection for feed efficiency impossible.
Turning Data into Actionable Feed Efficiency Insights
Adirondack Farms installed AfiLab for daily milk weights, AfiCollars for activity and rumination monitoring, and automated sort gates to seamlessly separate cows needing attention. In the summer of 2024, they joined the beta program for the AfiCollar Feed Efficiency Service. This technological integration shifted their strategy from visually walking pens to utilizing concrete, digital metrics that highlight individual dry matter intake and precise Income Over Feed values on a daily basis.
"It frees up my day. I don’t have to go out and walk the cows and try and decide how much milk she’s making and how much feed she’s eating. It’s a number. It’s simple, it’s concrete."
A Clear Path to More Profitable Cows
The automated system acts as an additional employee, eliminating the need to search the pens and severely reducing the labor required to find sick or in-heat animals. Shortly after implementation, the farm increased its heat detection rate by an estimated 5-10%. The AfiCollar Feed Efficiency service freed up Starceski’s daily schedule by identifying unprofitable cows for immediate culling. Long-term, the data will allow ADK to breed specifically for feed efficiency, producing replacements that consume less feed while maintaining high production.
Adirondack Farms at-a-Glance
- Beekmantown, New York
- Herd Size: 4,000 cows across three sites
- Afimilk Products: AfiCollar, AfiCollar Feed Efficiency Service, AfiLab, AfiSort, Afimilk MPCs and milk meters, AfiFarm
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