Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) is to partner with US based IoT company, HerdDogg, for what it says will be the largest real-time cattle health pilot ever conducted, on 10,000 animals on several grazing properties and feedlots across NSW.
MLA will fund the addition of HerdDogg’s DoggTags to the cattle with the aim of providing earlier indications of animal illness, improving overall animal health and testing a new long-range Bluetooth system capable of transmitting biometric and proximity-based behaviours at a distance of 300 metres.
HerdDogg, founded in 2015, markets a patented IoT-based system that includes the DoggTags attached to the animals’ ears and cloud-connected DoggBone readers placed at strategic sites around the farm. These gather livestock biometrics and behavioural data, and the HerdDogg mobile app provides access and alerts for each animal’s health record.
Melissa Brandao, founder and CEO of HerdDogg, said that, unlike the low-cost HerdDogg, technology solutions for the beef industry had been expensive and unsuitable for remote areas.
“For this trial, we’re eager to prove that HerdDogg can provide animal managers with early warning of illness by automating the analysis of animal biometrics,” she said. “This delivers two important benefits: reduced labour costs and improved animal health and wellbeing.”
She said data gathered would be made available to Australian researchers “to further develop insights for the benefit of HerdDogg’s offering and the advancement of the Australian meat and livestock industry and allow researchers to really explore a rich data set from which a range of behavioural algorithms and alerts can be developed.”
These researchers include Mark Trotter, associate professor of precision livestock at Central Queensland University. He said: “We’ve been using these types of sensors in a research context for years and the data tells us an enormous amount about the animal: its reproductive status, grazing activity, health and welfare.
“The HerdDogg system aims to take this from an expensive scientific tool to something that can be affordably used by any red-meat producer, and that will make a big impact on the livestock industries.”
HerdDogg claims that, by transmitting current herd information direct from field to cloud to mobile app, farmers now have real-time answers to key questions such as: is my animal in heat? Is she ill or injured? is she in the right pen or pasture?
“HerdDogg requires minimal technical expertise and provides immediate insights without any previous health history or animal records,” it claims.
“In field trials, farmers have seen two- to three-day early detection of illness and received real-time status updates on heats and missing animals, enabling them to get out to the animals faster.”
MLA funding multiple tag trials
MLA said it had approved funding for the trial at its August board meeting, “demonstrating global thought leadership for the entire global industry. Its subsidiary, MLA Donor Company, is also helping to fund a trial of the Australian developed Ceres Tag on 500 cattle.
MLA Donor Company has also funded trials of Embedivet, an embedded cattle monitor from Sydney-based startup Livestock Labs designed to collect and transmit a range of biometric data to enable farmers to better manage their herds.
MLA general manager of research, development & innovation, Sean Starling, said: “We are eager to see how the HerdDogg system can impact positively on the way livestock are managed across the industry and bring significant economic and non-financial value.”
MLA’s, unspecified, funding for HerdDogg comes after Starling earlier this year played down the prospects of any such technology securing funding from either MLA or the MLA Donor Company.
He told the IoT Festival in Melbourne in June: “I get a lot of people emailing me saying ‘I have got a new smart tag’ for an animal. Are you interested in developing it with us?’ and I say ‘have you checked what is already on the market? Here is an email with a list of 50. Show me where you are different.”
However he added “I win races I don’t back horses, so if I want to win a race called ‘smart tag on an animal’ I will back every horse in the race I possibly can, but if you are just coming up the starting gate, maybe I won’t, depending on how many have already gone.”
MLA report on cattle monitoring
The MLA just published a report Demonstrating the value of animal location and behaviour data in the red meat value chain that, it says “combines the results of several research activities aimed at exploring and uncovering the potential value for ranchers if they could remotely monitor the location, behaviour and state of the animals under their management.”
According to MLA, “the report noted that positive economic impacts can only be realised if the hardware can be provided at appropriate cost, producers actually adopt the technology, and decisions that drive profitability can be made from the location, behaviour and state data.”
