Labby wants to make milk healthier and cows happier with better sensors

Milk from the cows is tested once a month by a traveling technician. It's ridiculous to test milk flowing from cows once a month in a world where bovine mastitis can show up on a daily basis. Over time, the company believes it can start predicting issues before they happen.

A hand-held product that can be used anywhere, or an inline product that can be hooked into the milk machines, are the two different versions of the company's product.

Both products have their strengths. The handheld device can be used by any technician out in the field, and you can use it to test a cow on a phone app. If you have suspicions about an animal having an illness, that's great. The inline device is capable of working over the internet. It is possible to test every cow, every milk, even if the results are assigned to the wrong cow.

Labby has a portable device. The image is called Labby

The device takes milk samples and sends them to the cloud, according to Labby. The company uses machine- learning models to get the readings. It can estimate the contents of the milk by breaking it down. Farmers can use an app or web browser to see the full testing history of any animal they assign, to ensure they are going a bovine and beyond.

Critical indications about animal health are given in animal health records. Milk is a good indicator for everything. Each animal is only tested once a month. Julia Somerdin, CEO and founder of Labby, thinks that this is a failure for the farmers and animals. Mastitis is a health problem for animals. It can change from day to day. When they do 30-day testing, the test will tell you everything is fine, but if the animal develops a case the next day, it can be subclinical. Farmers don't know how the animal is doing between tests.

You might be wondering who cares about dairy farming. There are 9 million cows in the U.S.

Spot testing and trends for each animal in the herd are both provided by Labby. The image is called Labby

With our solution, we can provide on- farm real-time testing to help provide the farmer with daily, weekly and monthly health records. Today's industry practices don't take animal health into account.

There are large sums of money involved. The Labby team tells me that milk quality is related to revenue. Higher-quality milk nets the milk producers more money per gallon of milk delivered, because healthier cows need less veterinary attention.

Labby can be inserted in the value chain. Suppliers that help farmers produce more and better milk are some of the things that the dairy industry has. The biggest challenge with our service is the creation of real-time data. The data can be used by animal genetics companies to make better decisions. The gap between dairy producers and veterinarians can be bridged.

Labby has a sensor that analyzes milk. The image is called Labby

It's easy to understand how Labby adds significant value and the ability to be an early warning when you hear about "telehealth for cows."

You don't need a technician to sample the milk anymore, that's the most important thing Somerdin explained how the company has designed a set-it-and-forget-it approach to continuous testing.

A number of other investors, including MIT Media lab's E14 fund, also invested in Labby.

The company started selling its products in October and has only just begun shipping its products to customers. In the short term, it's a hardware+SaaS business, but after that, it's time to start using the data.

There are three revenue streams in our model. We provide the testing in the cloud for the dairy farmers once a month, and they pay once for the hardware equipment. Somerdin said the farmer paid per cow per day. We're looking at data as well. We think we are creating value for the industry. We won't have a data licensing fee until we have half a million cows.

Big data can be used to catch a glimpse of the future.

According to Somerdin, the data will help develop a reliable benchmark for each animal. We can look at the pattern of disease in the herd based on that. Predicting patterns for milk production can be done using historical data.

The company wants to shake up the industry by bringing all the farmers to the yard. They said it was better than yours. They will teach you but you will have to pay.