Avoid the Danger Zone!
Now that we are starting the breeding season, with the pre-breeding tail painting completed, we at Tailpainter.com hope you are keeping safe and well.
But beware: we are in the breeding Danger Zone! Your actions in the next few weeks will have a big impact on the profit you make next year.
The basics of what we are trying to do here are simple: get as many cows in calf in as short a period of time as possible, such that they are grazing on grass for as long as possible. The less well we do this, the more we are paying to feed a cow that isn't producing, and the less milk she produces over the year.
As you may know, I am an AI Technician as well as a dairy farmer. As I visited farms, what I noticed was that the farmers with fewer repeats and fewer empties were those farmers that also seemed to be doing a really good job of applying tail paint. Farmers that only re-applied paint every 2-3 weeks (as it says on the bottle!) were not getting as good a result.
I figured that a key reason farmers did not top up tail paint as often was because the job was a real pain.
When I was younger I'd pull myself up on the rump rail in the milking parlour, but as I got older and wiser I realised this was dangerous in the short term due to falls, kicks, and cows standing on my feet, and in the long term due to hip damage and repetitive stress injury. I installed a gantry in the milking parlour which made the job less dangerous but tail painting was still a lot of work and took time.
I was getting too old for all that, and was worried about my ability to keep a good calving rate going. There had to be an easier way. "What if I could apply tail paint from the pit?"
I tried a few different ideas, including a rad roller on a long pole - I swear there was more tail paint on me than on the cow! But after a few versions, I had the basic prototype for the Tailpainter. That worked pretty well, so we refined it into something that someone would want to buy.
It turns out last year hundreds of farmers did just that! They've seen the benefit of that small investment in their calving this year: they had fewer empties and more compact calving. Being able to tail paint quickly and easily from the parlour pit (or wherever makes the most sense for them) has been a game-changer for our customers.
The Tailpainter can help you avoid the Danger Zone in this year's breeding season, and harvest the benefits of thousands of Euro in increased profitability.
We recommend that you paint with multiple colours, and for this we sell the Two Colour Refill Kit : this makes it quick to change colours. If you use only one colour, we also have available the One Colour Refill Kit.