Image Credit: Getty Images, Todd Klassy/Flickr
In an effort to help dairy farmers better manage their herds, Danish technology firm, SmartFarming has developed an animal tracking and monitoring system called CowDetect. The system enables farmers to maintain a more meaningful account of individual animals by analyzing movement and eating patterns in real time. This data can be used to determine health, allowing farmers to treat or remove sick cows before they affect the wellness of the entire herd, as well as plan milking and fertilization schedules that can help maximize productivity.
The system uses active, ultra-wide band RFID tags and readers developed by Ubisense, and explained below:
The tags emit a series of short signals (billionths of a second or shorter) at frequencies between 6 and 8 GHz. According to Ubisense, the extremely short nature of these pulses makes them less vulnerable to RF interference from objects and other RF noise, relative to conventional RFID real-time location systems. Once a reader receives a tag’s signal by means of a phased array antenna, it calculates the tag’s location by employing two complementary techniques: time difference of arrival (TDOA) and angle of arrival (AOA).
This technology has implications for agricultural operations of any scale. It can provide smaller farms with an effective, low-cost way to modernize in order to compete in a marketplace that is increasingly industrial. And while we’ve seen numerous examples of why factory farming methods are problematic, particularly when raising livestock, the reality is that they’re probably not going away anytime soon. By being able to better monitor the health of herd and catch illnesses before they spread will go a long way towards creating a safer food supply.
RFID Journal: Danish Dairy Farmers Adopt RFID to Improve Yield
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