Wayne Taylor
Board Member and former President of Holstein Fresian NZ“I was an AI technician for 17 years and use quite a bit of sexed semen. We’ve used FlashMates for five seasons. We rely on them. We haven’t put any bulls out at all.”
Robert Buchanan
Suffolk North Farm“Our empty rates have dropped a lot… you’re not getting that embryonic loss. We’re picking up silent heats with hardly any marking on the tailpaint. It makes the FlashMates pretty cheap, more people should be using them. We’ve trialled neck collars and FlashMates are a lot more attainable.”
Erik Lenssen
Canterbury“FlashMate appears to save a lot of money at no extra cost. Using FlashMate we picked up cows I would have missed and mating cows unnecessarily can be a huge cost. The biggest noticeable difference is the lack of short returns.”
John Tanner
Leeston, Canterbury“It’s a lot easier for the staff to see a light flashing than look at tailpaint. It’s less stressful than having to get up every morning to have a look and they’re not that expensive. They’re certainly picking up the silent heats. Easy to apply, easy to operate; it didn’t take any longer than tailpaint!”
Angela and Steve Reed
Darfield, Canterbury“Very simple for inexperienced people to make good decisions, tail paint can be subjective. I’ve had some comfort handing over to four of the guys on the farm, for one person to consistently get up at 4:30am is a big ask. We only had 10 out of 800 cows that came off over four weeks, so that was an exceptional result.”
Hamish Maclean
Manuwaru, Waikato“You're just crazy if you don't use them.... so far it's the best thing that I've seen. Normally over mating I would not have a single day off. But with Flashmate, I was able to. What impressed me the most was when we checked over the pregnancy results. A lot of cows were in-calf to the first mating. They had been accurately identified first time, even the ones that did not rub with tail paint. It would have been the best 4-week-in-calf we have ever had.”
Shaun Gardner
Waiiti, Taranaki“With autumn-calving, cows are harder to pick. Using FlashMate we picked up cows we wouldn’t have seen. My 4 year daughter could pick cows! I had none come off the cows in the first six weeks and felt very comfortable that the right cows were going up for AB. It also gives you the delayed flash for when they’re actually on heat, rather than putting them up too early. I definitely felt it was an added edge in heat detection.”
