REAL LIFE NEWS: WHERE’S MY COW?
by Hazed
A Danish farmer is helping to pioneer a new way for herders to keep track of their flocks: he’s fitted all 3,000 cows on his farm with tracking technology
Each cow wears a collar which is fitted with a wireless real time locating system (RTLS) tag. The tags are scanned by sensors installed in the roof of the cows’ barn. Every few seconds, the data is sent to a hub which collates every cow’s movement and can send alerts to the farmer’s smartphone if the cow is ill, or it’s ready to be inseminated.
Asger Christensen, who took over the farm after buying it from his wife’s parents in 1982, has been involved in a trial of the system which is called GEA CowView. He explained, “You can see how long the cows are lying down, you can see how many hours the cow sleeps, how long the cow is walking round, and it tells me a little bit how the cow is feeling, its welfare. If a cow is lying down too long, maybe it’s sick. And on my iPhone I can see where the cow is in the stable.”
He can also find out where a particular cow is by tapping in its number into the app on his iPhone.
With the farming industry under intense pressure and profits shrinking, this technology helps to maintain a happy, productive herd of cows which could mean the difference between the farm remaining in business and going under.
The company is also developing similar tech to use on pigs, although their RTLS tags have to be on ear tags because they won’t tolerate wearing collars.
There’s a lot more fascinating detail about how the system works at the source link below.
