Cows used to have names. They used to be milked by hand. Nowadays, cows are milked by machine and cows have numbers. Farmers have lost that valuable, physical contact with each individual cow.

The changing dairy farming landscape and the rapid expansion of robotic milking has disrupted the industry. Improved it, to be sure; but we lost something along the way. More and more, farmers look at their computers rather than at their cows.

Instrumentation and automation in the milking process requires new, automated ways to monitor the health of the herd.

Mastitis is one of the most destructive diseases to the general health of the herd and to a generous dairy yield for the farmer. Early detection of mastitis to monitor health of the herd is crucial to farmers, but the equipment necessary for this has not been available. Most available means of detection signal the farmer only after a cow is already sick.

Detecting mastitis early, at the sub-clinical phase, is the best for farmer and herd. Automated monitoring of sub-clinical mastitis with LUCI^® fulfills this need; providing valuable data for optimum productivity.