The sooner he can catch the problem, the easier it is to treat.

“This is what her normal activity level looks like, and then you can see, boom, we have no activity,” Taber says. “This is what her normal rumination time looks like, boom, no rumination.”

With a herd of 800 cows, finding the sick ones can be difficult. That’s where technology comes in.

Taber, who operates Donley Farms in Shoshone, recently installed the HerdMonitor collar system from GENEX. All of his cows wear a collar, that tracks their activity, chewing time, and eating time.

“We are finding, that we can treat these cows quicker. Even if we find mastitis out there, a day makes a difference,” he said.

The collars are just a small part of the technology that helps keep his dairy operational. In addition to a collar, each cow has an RFID chip that helps to track milk production. As the cows walk into the milking parlor, the system scans the chip and can record how many gallons of milk the cow produces each day.

Around the Magic Valley farmers are testing out new technology and finding more efficient ways to produce higher quantities of food. Technology has come a long way since the days of horse-drawn plows.