From day one.

A lifetime of insight.

You can’t be everywhere. But SenseHub can

Farming today is tougher than ever. Herds are getting larger, labour harder to find, and the pressure to keep animals healthy and productive has never been greater.

Yet, every stage of a cow’s life is critical. How you rear your calves dictates their future fertility, how you transition your cows impacts their next lactation, and how you monitor nutrition shapes their overall performance.

SenseHub Dairy offers another set of eyes and ears on every animal, at every life stage, every minute of the day.

The O’Callaghan family utilise SenseHub Lifetime

1. Calf & Heifer
Growth <12m

Key challenges:
Newborn calves are extremely vulnerable to diseases like scour and pneumonia — responsible for over 50% of calf mortality globally (USDA NAHMS, 2020). Early identification of subtle behaviour changes (such as reduced activity or feeding) is critical, as calves often mask signs of illness until it’s advanced.

Why monitoring matters:
Continuous behaviour monitoring enables early alerts when calves deviate from their normal patterns, helping farmers act before the illness becomes severe — improving survival rates and long-term performance.

2. Breeding Heifer 1-2yrs

Key challenges:
Heifers must grow efficiently to meet target breeding weights and reach puberty at the optimal time. Poor nutrition, silent heats, and subclinical illness can delay reproductive readiness — increasing lifetime costs and reducing milk yield potential.

Why monitoring matters:
Monitoring feeding, activity, and estrus behaviour allows farmers to ensure heifers are growing well and breeding at the optimal time — reducing age at first calving, a major predictor of lifetime productivity.

3. Transition Period

Key challenges:
This is the most critical stage in a cow’s lifecycle, accounting for 80% of all dairy cow health problems (LeBlanc et al., 2006). Risk of milk fever, retained placenta, displaced abomasum, and metritis is highest.

Why monitoring matters:
Monitoring behaviour, rumination, and milk performance around calving helps farmers act early — reducing disease incidence, protecting fertility, and supporting a smoother return to production.

4. Reproduction & Fertility Management

Key challenges:
Heat detection accuracy is often below 50% on farms relying solely on visual observation (Fricke et al., 2014). Missed or mistimed inseminations lead to increased open days, culling, and lower profitability.

Why monitoring matters:
Monitoring technology provides real-time, detection of heat, silent estrus, and irregular cycles, improving insemination timing and conception rates and reducing reproductive losses.

5. Lactation & Milk Monitoring

Key challenges:
Milk production is influenced by a complex interaction of nutrition, health, and behaviour. Cows in early lactation face intense metabolic demands, making them vulnerable to mastitis, ketosis, and other production-related diseases. Disruptions in rumination or feed intake often signal issues before clinical signs appear. Without monitoring, milk quality losses may remain undetected until somatic cell counts rise or symptoms are visible — impacting performance, profitability, and cow well-being.

Why monitoring matters:
Monitoring rumination, activity, and somatic cell count enables farmers to detect health or nutritional challenges before they affect milk yield or quality. By spotting early warning signs, farmers can take action sooner — protecting both cow well-being and consistent milk production.

6. Dry-Off & Culling Management

Key challenges:
In late lactation, declines in milk performance, or undetected health issues, can reduce profitability and increase culling rates. A poorly managed drying-off routine can also increase mastitis risk.

Why monitoring matters:
Lifetime data helps spot gradual changes in performance or behaviour — guiding better dry-off protocols and timing, selective dry cow therapy, and long-term herd replacement decisions. It also helps farmers make better management decisions, to ensure a cow receives an adequate dry cow period and is in optimal health and condition and ready for the next lactation.

Trusted Worldwide by >16,000 Farmers

SenseHub is the only behaviour monitoring system in the world to monitor animals across their full lifetime starting from day 1.

Our technical support teams are world-class, wherever you are, whenever you need us, we’re with you, always.

Real farmers. Real results.

“It is so easy to miss something with a freshly calved cow, but it is so quick to flag an issue, and I love that peace of mind.”

Ashleigh Fennell, Carlow Dairy Farmer

“SenseHub is like an extra labour unit, working 24/7 to detect heats and health issues.”

Dale Byers, Fermanagh Dairy Farmer

“Life with SenseHub is very beneficial to me as I have three young kids, so I get to spend more time with them.”

Dermot Reilly, Mayo Dairy Farmer

References

USDA National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS). (2020). Dairy 2014: Health and Management Practices on U.S. Dairy Operations, 2014. United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Veterinary Services.
Soberon, F., & Van Amburgh, M. E. (2013). The effect of nutrient intake from milk or milk replacer of preweaned dairy calves on lactation milk yield as adults: A meta-analysis of current data. Journal of Animal Science, 91(2), 706–712. https://doi.org/10.2527/jas.2012-5834
Fricke, P. M., Carvalho, P. D., Giordano, J. O., Valenza, A., Lopes, G., Amundson, M. C., & Wiltbank, M. C. (2014). Reproductive performance of lactating dairy cows after presynchronization with Double-Ovsynch or G6G and timed AI with Ovsynch. Theriogenology, 81(5), 682–689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.theriogenology.2013.12.018

Copyright & Disclaimer

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease in animals. For the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of disease in animals, you should consult your veterinarian. The accuracy of the data collected and presented through this product is not intended to match that of medical devices or scientific measurement devices. Copyright © 2025 Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA and its affiliates. All rights reserved.