Pioneers in the use of farming technology

AT the Kibbutz Shefayim dairy farm in Israel, visual heat detection would take a team of nine people six or seven hours per day.

But this is Israel's second biggest dairy farm, with 900 milkers, and every cow has a pedometer on its leg which measures how far it walks.

Dairy farmers have always known that cows in heat are more active, and when the Israelis started computerised herd management in the 1980s, they were first to use pedometers to measure how far a cow travels each day.