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TECHNOLOGY
Future farms AgResearch scientists will soon begin a study with cows fitted with a range of sensors that will monitor rumen temperature, measure activity using pedometers, and use video and GPS tracking to detect interaction between cows and microphones to monitor mooing.
By Tony Benny
Digital technology is becoming more prevalent on farms and is only set to increase as farmers strive to improve the wellbeing of their stock.
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team of scientists working in an AgResearch-led science programme called New Zealand Bioeconomy in the Digital Age is exploring what a dairy farm of the future will look like, how some of the technology now available can improve animal wellbeing and how that technology can be used to show consumers their food is being produced ethically. Led by agricultural data scientist Jeremy Bryant, researchers from AgResearch, DairyNZ and Fonterra are taking an animal-centric approach to better understand what are the key animal welfare indicators, how that can be objectively measured and how farmers can use technology to look after their cows better. “You can’t have your eyes on the cow 24/7, so digital technologies provide you with that option to track how things are performing – are they improving or going off track – so that’s where there are real benefits of technology,” Bryant says. “For consumers, it’s not enough for farmers to say, ‘They’re well cared for’. They want increasing evidence of that and digital can provide that evidence.” There’s a large range of technology
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available, 90 different types in the animal wellbeing space alone, most providing data on whether an animal is sick or in heat, but very few provide broader data on how an animal is experiencing its life. The scientists want to identify existing technology that will give them a holistic picture of animal wellbeing and have funding for three years to do the work, ending in 2023. “By then we want to say what the key welfare indicators are across the welfare domains (nutrition, environment, health and being able to express natural behaviours and mental state), what are measurable already and what might need technology measures to be developed to understand the state,” he says. A study will start soon with cows fitted with a range of sensors that will monitor rumen temperature, measure activity using pedometers, video and GPS tracking to detect interaction between cows and microphones to monitor mooing. “I think these animals will probably have the most devices on them ever seen really, so we can get insights as to whether these animals are well-fed or not and whether farmers could use some
of those technologies, or proxies, to say this animal needs feeding now or not,” he says. “There’s going to be microphones in the paddock to capture the moos and how many moos and the duration of them to say they’re hungry now, they need to be moved on or put on a new break. “We’ll combine this with data from the devices that tell us about their movements within the paddock and between animals and how long they have been actively eating or ruminating. “At the moment, understanding of hunger or fullness is very much reliant on post-grazing residuals really, which you might get when you go into the paddock, but by that stage they might have had three of four hours when they might have liked some more food.” The scientists will also study heat stress and whether an alert system could be developed to advise farmers when they need to consider mitigation measures. “We’re wanting to understand what’s the risk of animals experiencing heat stress, for how many days, what might the impact be on milk production and developing alerts for those farmers to say, ‘Tuesday next week, it’s going to be
DAIRY FARMER
November 2021
26/10/21 12:59 PM
