Custom Lely Horizon integration
Lely Horizon is Lely's farm management software for dairy farms: it translates the data from the Lely robots and collars into tasks, alerts and insights on health, milk, feeding and fertility. Horizon already integrates with a number of third-party systems, and the farmer decides who they share data with. The adviser, the feed supplier or a larger farm's own dashboard is not always on that list. Appfront builds the integration between Horizon and those systems, using the routes Lely provides for this.
What is a Lely Horizon integration?
A Lely Horizon integration lets Lely's management software exchange data with the farm's systems and its advisers. Horizon brings together the data from the Astronaut milking robot, the collars and other Lely solutions: fat, protein and somatic cell count, milk predictions, heat monitoring, a health score per cow and feed intake, with the Lely Vector for ration and feeding schedules. The farmer works task by task, on PC, tablet and phone. The integration puts the data the farmer wants to share into the systems where it is needed, and brings back what Horizon needs.
According to Lely, Horizon is explicitly open to partners and to the dairy farmer's own partners. At launch, Lely named integrations with Dairy Comp, Uniform-Agri, CRV and Herde, among others, to synchronise calvings and inseminations between systems, and the platform follows the ICAR standards for exchanging animal data. A custom integration covers what is not on that list: a feed calculation from the feed supplier, a dedicated overview for a farm with multiple sites, or an adviser who currently receives the figures as an export.
We build custom integrations because every dairy farm has different systems and advisers around it. Which Horizon subscription you have, which data you want to share, with whom, and which side is the source for which data determines how the integration works. Lely does not publish public API documentation; the farmer approves the data exchange themselves. Which integration options exist for your situation, we look at together with you and Lely in the first step.
Record once
In the barn, in Horizon.
Your choice
Share with whoever you choose.
Overview
Your figures in one place.
How we build your Lely Horizon integration
We start with your farm: which Lely solutions and which Horizon subscription you use, which systems and advisers work alongside them, which data currently moves by export or by hand, and who uses it. Then we build the first integration, usually the flow that takes the most manual work, such as feed intake and production going to the feed calculation or the adviser's overview. You work with it for a while. Other flows follow once that goes well. After that, we maintain the integration when Horizon or your other systems change.
Solutions, systems, manual work.
The biggest time saving first.
More flows and checks.
Go-live, monitoring, and maintenance when things change.
What a Lely Horizon integration actually does
The components below appear in almost every Lely Horizon integration. Which ones you need depends on your farm and on the systems and advisers around you.
Milk
Production and quality.
Feed
Intake to the feed calculation.
Health
Alerts for the vet.
Fertility
Calvings and inseminations.
Permission
Managed by the farmer.
Reporting
Multiple sites together.
Who we build a Lely Horizon integration for
The integration is intended for farms and advisers who work with Lely Horizon and also have systems that do not talk to it as standard. The more cows, sites or clients, the more it delivers.
Dairy farmers
Multiple sites or barns.
Feed suppliers
Intake to the ration.
Vets
Health at a glance.
Advisers
Figures from multiple farms.
Technology and integrations
This page is about Lely Horizon integrations. For sharing agricultural data via an independent data platform, see our page on the JoinData integration; for the mineral cycle of the dairy farm, our page on the KringloopWijzer integration; for machine and terminal data, our page on the ISOBUS integration; and for the administration of the whole farm, our page on agricultural administration software. You can read about our approach on building software.
Why Appfront for your Lely Horizon integration?
A ration calculated with last week's feed intake, an insemination recorded differently in two systems, or an adviser who has to ask for an export every time costs a dairy farm money and visibility. That is what we build on: record it once in the barn, share it with whoever the farmer chooses, and an integration that shows when something went wrong.
Less retyping
Data comes along automatically.
Reliable
One source per data item.
Visible
Errors in the log.
Security and privacy in a Lely Horizon integration
The integration processes the farmer's farm data on cows, production, health and feed. It sends only the fields that are needed and gives an adviser or supplier access only to the farms and data the farmer has consented to. Every exchange is logged with its time and content.
The integration runs in a European data centre, using encrypted connections. Keys and passwords are kept secured and are not visible to staff. The data remains the farmer's: if they withdraw their consent, the exchange stops.
Frequently asked questions about a Lely Horizon integration
Questions that dairy farmers, feed suppliers and advisers ask before they get started.
A connection between Lely Horizon and another system you use, such as a feed ration calculation, an adviser portal, a data warehouse or your own reporting. Data on milk, feed, health and fertility then flows across automatically, with the farmer's consent.
Lely's farm management software for dairy farms. Horizon translates the data from Lely robots, collars and other Lely solutions into tasks, alerts and insights, and is available in the Basic, Control and Advance subscriptions.
Yes. When it was introduced, Lely mentioned integrations with Dairy Comp, Uniform-Agri, CRV and Herde, among others, for calvings and inseminations, and Horizon combines Lely data with selected third-party information. A custom integration is for the systems and data flows that are not on that list.
Lely does not publish public API documentation. According to Lely, Horizon is open to partners and follows the ICAR standards for animal data, and the farmer approves the data exchange themselves. We agree which route suits your situation in the first step, together with you and Lely.
The farmer. In Horizon, they decide for themselves how and with whom their data is shared. The integration respects this: only data from farms that have given consent, and only the fields that are needed.
The integration retries, and puts an exchange that keeps failing in an error list together with the reason. You can see which farm and which cow it concerns, and you can resend it after correcting it.
For dairy farmers with multiple locations or their own overview, and for feed suppliers, vets and advisers who work with data from many farms. A farm that only uses Horizon's standard integrations usually doesn't need one.
Want Lely Horizon to work with your other systems?
Tell us how you use Horizon and which systems and advisers work alongside it. We'll show you how an integration can take over the manual work.