Brothers, Otto and Federico Montero – take SenseHub® Dairy to Costa Rica

Otto and Federico Montero

Location	Farm Size	Herd Size
Cartago, Costa Rica	26 effective hectares	100 Jersey cows

Maria Cassineri one of our SenseHub Training Specialist caught up with brothers Otto and Federico Montero from Agroganadera Montero who recently installed SenseHub® Dairy in their farm located in the beautiful land of Costa Rica. Agroganadera Montero is a dairy farm situated in Cartago, 1700 meters above sea level, with a tropical climate, milking 100 Jersey cows at peak through an 8-bail herringbone on 26 effective hectares.

Their SenseHub Dairy monitoring journey started with their uncle Andres who is a sharemilker in Reporoa, who after having the SenseHub Dairy monitoring solution for one season and seeing the potential of what the system could offer back home, made the decision to purchase and install a SenseHub solution and send it back to the home farm.

The brothers received the system in a box, and with remote support of our SenseHub Aftersales team in New Zealand they were able to complete the installation themselves, and after a couple of online training sessions they started mating their cows relying solely on the information provided by the system.

Maria was curious to learn more about their operation, their cows, and their team. The farm has been in the family for 3 generations starting with Otto Montero Sr, grandfather, and today, Otto Montero Jr, along with his sons Federico and Otto, now oversee the dairy operation.

Their team consists of six, a manager who is responsible for milkings and milk quality, a barn and feeding manage, another staff member looks after the paddocks and grazing blocks, while a calf rearer is in charge of the youngstock. All overseen by Otto and Federico who manage the team and overall farm operation.

The farm has a well-deserved reputation for always striving to achieve excellence and have been awarded for the past 10 consecutive years for excellence in milk quality by the local milk processing company, Cooperative Dos Pinos.

The main reason why they decided to install SenseHub monitoring was because they were keen to introduce a technical tool that allows them to break free from tradition and gain in-depth insights into their animals and add another level of precision in their practices.

It is very interesting to observe rumination and activity, during daytime cows graze pasture that consists of quicuyo grass and rye grasses. They are fed a concentrate that includes molasses and by-pass fat pre-milking, at nighttime cows go into a portable barn, almost like a plastic greenhouse and are offered silage.

The biggest challenge for them, has been finding a suitable and reliable internet service, after much research and decided on Starlink, which has worked well.

Their strategy going forward is to manage the change progressively as a way of easing their team into adopting to the new technology, they have an exceptional staff retention rate, most of them have been working on the farm for many years. They are excited to support their team in adapting to the technology and data insights they system provides, and using the insights to make more informed breeding and animal health decisions. Full team adoption of the technology is were Otto and Federico see will be the key to their success.

Our team will continue to support our Agroganadera Montero dairy operation in Costa Rica as they navigate their first season with SenseHub Dairy monitoring collars. We wish them and their team all the best and look forward to hearing the operational gains they make as they embed SenseHub monitoring into their dairy protocols.

To learn more, book a farm visit.

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Monitoring Solutions – Branding Explanation

The brand names for our monitoring solution have been subject to changes since recording our videos and farmer stories.

MSD Animal Health, a division of the MSD group of companies under Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ., U.S.A. and a global provider of animal health pharmaceuticals and technologies, purchased the Allflex New Zealand business in 2019 (including certain SCR-branded animal monitoring technologies). At the time, Allflex animal monitoring solutions were known as Allflex collars and the relevant desktop-based software was HeatTime Pro (both of which you may hear about in this video). The dairy monitoring solutions are now branded SenseHub® Dairy – MSD Animal Health’s desktop-based software is now known as Dataflow II™ and cloud-based monitoring software is known as a SenseHub® Dairy solution.