Fili’s world

Israeli projects in China never cease to amaze me. Everyday I hear about some weird project, and this one is up there on the top list.

Here's my quick translation from Hebrew of the NFC article written by Baruch Levi and titled : "A new Israeli patent will notify the Chinese when the cows are horny" :

Abstract : Tzacham Afikim, a Milking Computerized Systems Manufacturing Company, has completed a large scale project of setting up a management-monitoring system in a huge dairy barn built in Shanghai, China. The dairy farm is the largest in China with 3000 cows and 2000 heifers, 3 times the biggest dairy farm in Israel, costing 20 million US dollars.

As part of the computerized systems Tzacham has deployed 3000 ‘horny indicators' allowing the Chinese to get direct updates to the computer when a cow is in heat. This variable is extremely important to plan the right time to breed the cow. The heat indicator analysis when a cow is in heat according to the cow's movement which become more often and edgy during the heat period. Tzacham Afikim provided the farm in Shanghai with the professional knowledge and the needed design to set up the farm as well as the electronic management software to monitor the cow's milk produce, weight, health, and medical treatments. Tzacham Afikim CEO said that he sees China as one of the most important markets for sophisticated farming technologies in the upcoming years.

The Chinese, traditionally, were not big consumers of milk. Up till a decade ago average consumption of milk in China per person was one to two liters a year, to be compared with 200 liters per person a year in Israel and other western countries. In recent years the Chinese government has initiated a campaign to increase milk consumption to 20 liters a year in urban China. According to the forecast, consumption of milk will continue to spread dramatically in China, meaning more huge dairy farms involving big investments of money.