What is an extra hour worth to you each day? Technology can streamline processes, giving you and your employees back valuable time and enabling you to make smarter and more efficient choices about your business. Consider these five ways Micro machines can improve your dairy's processes.

1. Automate your feeding process

Automating processes that you would traditionally perform manually can help you reduce the time spent feeding by as much as a few hours. This means less run time on your equipment and more time for your employees to take on alternative tasks and projects.

Our Micro-Weigh System and Pro-Control Plus® Feed Batching System will allow you to automate your mixing and ration composition, meaning you'll feed more cattle more efficiently. Liquids, micro-ingredients, and dry ingredients auto-dispense from overhead bins into mixers. Liquids added at the right time ensure consistency in every bite.

Yet automation means nothing without accuracy. Is your herd getting the right blend of ingredients for optimal health? And is your business getting a return on its significant investment in feed costs, especially in an uncertain economy?

2. Improve accuracy

Micro-ingredients and feed additives are expensive, there is no denying that. On average, feed accounts for 60 percent of expenses. You need to find ways to increase efficiencies while reducing costs. Getting the precise nutrient measurements in each batch for maximum impact matters. Can you adjust your current feed system to meet production levels? Does what feed your cattle is getting change day over day? Are you accurately measuring ingredients to the gram?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, then your feeding processes can get more accurate. Our Pro-Control® Mixer ensures accurate blending and delivery. The Pro-Control Plus® Feed Batching System improves the accuracy and speed of diet composition. Each animal will receive the same critical nutrients in every bite of feed, ensuring they consume the ratios your nutritionist recommends.

With our Micro Ingredient Usage Report, you get an accurate daily report card of what feed supplements reached your herd. Data at your fingertips means you can adjust as needed and avoid guesswork. And that matters in an industry where there are so many little things that need to go right every day.

3. Limit mixing steps

What does an extra hour saved in feed mixing and delivery mean to your schedule and bottom line? Consider the time you currently spend adjusting feed mix rations between production levels. Or how much time it takes to troubleshoot and fix batching errors.

Standard mixing processes take multiple steps to ensure that you include all your micro-ingredients in each ration. Additional steps not only increase the time it takes to mix a ration but also decrease the accuracy of the final ration composition. Our products easily identify variances and know how to minimize them. Your micro-ingredients get mixed into a homogenous slurry that precisely incorporates each ingredient into each diet as intended. You can mix your feed faster with the confidence that you're doing it right.

4. Reduce employee errors

The hardest factor to control in your feeding process is the human element. How confident are you in the accuracy of the distribution of ingredients to each cow?

Whether an employee has a heavy hand with certain ingredients or is constantly trying to "beat the scale," human error can add variability to ration composition and decrease the efficiency of your operation. You can't watch every step of your feeding process throughout the day. Our system takes that weight off your shoulders. The Pro-Control Plus® Feed Batching System tracks employee habits while feeding and makes automatic adjustments based on how they normally feed, taking human variability out of the equation.

Technology can decrease the time your team members spend busy and increase the time they are productive. Perhaps you can apply that labor to other areas of your operation. Or use the time saved by employing a Micro machine to run a leaner operation. Pairing qualified team members with the right products and solutions drives efficiency and ultimately, healthier, more productive cows and greater revenue.

5. Have a user-friendly process

Your employees are unique. They may come from diverse backgrounds and have varying levels of technical literacy and training. If your process isn't easy for them to understand and implement, then all of your efforts to increase efficiency are futile. Our Micro-Weigh System and Pro-Control Plus® Feed Batching System are user-friendly. Their configuration and multilingual interface give your employees a comprehensive understanding of the process and allow you to increase your dairy's efficiency. If current team members' workloads are increasing, the right tools can offset some of that burden and increase productivity and job satisfaction.

Your dairy may face rising labor costs coupled with labor shortages. In the current, uncertain market, a user-friendly product could aid in employee acquisition and retention. Consider updated feeding technology as another tool to make your dairy an attractive employer for the next generation of talent.

The right systems will use flexibility, reliability, and accuracy to help you get your time back. Spend less time solving problems and more time doing what you love.