Geitenbelang has a new feed program available for its feeding systems. Voermaat is simple and therefore much clearer. 

Rob van der Geest of Geitenbelang: “The reason for the program developed in-house is that we did not want to be dependent on one supplier, in this case Elda (EGAM feed module). A lot is changing in the goat sector, for example Litams has been active in goats since the beginning of this year. The farmer must be able to choose. This is possible with the new feed program, because it can be linked to any management system.” In addition, Geitenbelang would like to look abroad in the future. If other management systems are used there, that is no longer an obstacle. The starting point in the development of the new program was mainly that it should work in a user-friendly and simple manner. “No unnecessary information or too many screens. The goal is that the goat keeper is behind the controls and gets the correct information with a minimum number of mouse clicks. And it had to be a flexible program, so that the goat farmer can make information visible or not according to their own wishes. The trick is to present the desired information transparently, for example in the form of lists that can be made according to your own wishes,” says Van der Geest. 

Comprehensives
The most important screen in Voermaat is called ANIMALS. All goats that are individually fed are shown here. For each goat there is information about its status, production level and feed data. The data is refreshed every 10 minutes, so that it is up to date at any time of the day. The structure of this screen can be set up according to your own wishes: columns can be left out or added. Van der Geest: “This keeps it all very well-organised without superfluous information. 

 From this screen, animals can be moved to a different feed group, but this can also be done automatically via preset limit values, for example above a certain production or after a number of days. You can also order goats in any column in this screen, or sort goats with the same characteristic, for example all goats with more than 75 percent residual feed.  

Reports
It is easy to create reports and lists with Voermaat. The animals shown in the ANIMALS screen are processed in the reports. A number of standard reports are possible, such as business overview of the last 7 days, or feed intake for the last 7 days, etc. These reports are automatically exported to Excel. In Excel, the data may be edited for operational management.

Linking with management
Voermaat must of course be able to link to the existing management program at a farm, so that a change only needs to be communicated in one place. The first link between the feed program and the EGAM management program has recently been established on a dairy goat farm. A link has also been established between Voermaat and the Litams management program. 

It is very likely that a stand-alone version of Voermaat will also be on the market for businesses that do not work with a management program. Every VanderPas feeding system that is sold henceforth comes standard with Voermaat.