Smart Cow Collars
halterhq.com
halterhq.com
I see some major drawbacks for things like this:
1. Because of the way cows behavior naturally they will get their neck band caught on something. Extrication can become dire and stressful. A few deaths and a system like this is simply not worth it.
2. These will be roughed up -- like a lot. Cows like to play in water and rub on things. If this company doesn't last you'll be SOL quick enough that your initial investment won't pay off (saying nothing of software dependencies...)
3. The point of interacting with cows manually is to see her. Even in herds in the 1000s someone familiar with the herd will recognize cows (especially past problem ones) and can also see issues before they become a risk for her.
Cows are very well adjusted to being taken care of by humans. Everytime you back off the human component from herd management the domesticated cow will be less cared for.
Add to that, my wife can gather and guide the entire herd with a bucket full of cubes, or every even random junk in a pinch to get them to go anywhere she wants whenever she wants.
5c/month/cow sounds more reasonable. Which in turn means your hardware needs to cost only a couple of dollars and last many many years.
There are some problems with the technology. Temple Grandin visited us and said she didn't like the idea of people actually visiting the cows less. Collar worn sensors can't tell if a cow has a rock in its hoof or detect all diseases. With less human observation the cows may suffer more. I've seen one cow start chewing on another cows collar to help it try to get it off. GPS antenna have to stay facing skyward and can be blocked by trees. Some of the later research switched to ear tags instead of collars because they are less of an impedance and less likely to get damaged by the cows. It's more difficult to get everything you need into an ear tag though. There have been several attempts to start companies based on the technology, all of which failed so far. Halter appears to be the latest.
We stopped doing research when a prison company approached us with an interest in putting the collars on prisoners.
Jesus, that is terrifying.
“Some prisoners are more strong-willed than others and will continue going no matter shock or sounds”
When he made a back entrance, he just painted white lines instead of the more expensive pipe setup. He'd learned from neighboring ranches that once the cows understand the pipes, they won't walk across the painted lines. And, I don't quite know how, but new cows learn from the existing herd not to try the white lines.
A group of monkeys were put in a room with a ladder leading to a banana. When a monkey touches the banana, sprinklers turn on and soak the room. The monkeys quickly learnt to ignore the banana to avoid getting wet, and even physically stopped newly introduced monkeys (who were unaware of the sprinklers) from climbing the ladder.
The entire group was eventually replaced one by one. The replacement group had never seen the consequence of climbing the ladder, but policed eachother as well as any new members from eating the banana.
[1] https://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-five-monkeys-experiment-...
[1] http://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys-and-a-...
They never even say what sort of Monkey it is.
Yes, exactly, a.k.a. Cattle Grid [0]. They are heavily used in the UK in National Parks where there are free-ranging livestock (horses, cattle, etc). There is one just a mile from where I live, at the edge of the New Forest.
> but your car would do just fine.
If only the tourists realised this! Locals take them at speed and you just shoot across them and the speed evens out the bumpiness. Tourists take them slow which makes them much more noisy and bumpy. That said if you try to turn on them (e.g. if you haven't straightened up from a junction) they can cause a significant skid risk, especially when they are wet.
Finally, many of the local ones have little escape ramps for small animals (e.g. hedgehogs) that fall in and then would otherwise get trapped in the pit below the pipes.
In general, the cows are more driven to the robotic milkers by the feed they recieve while in the machine, rather than the feeling of relief (these systems generally provide an alert of cows being lazy...ones that haven't been milked in 10+ hours and need a shove), however these systems _do_ provide both improved health and improved productivity.
Even in experienced dairy herds, handling the animals and shoving them all to the robot at the same time causes stress. Having these machines running constantly (1 machine can handle a herd of ~50) lets cows regulate their own pattern, which can benefit herd dynamics as well (more timid animals can self regulate to a quieter period away from pushier animals). Farms can easily see 10-20% improvement on milk yield.
It also has the benefit that animals can go more or less often...you may have some animals who are comfortable with 3 visits a day, some comfortable at 4 (or even 5 if they have really high yield).
When I raised cows all I had to do was yell "FOOOOOOD!" across the pasture and they came running.
One dairy we visited had robotic milk machines running all night. The cows return as needed and the cups automatically find the tests, check for disease, track milk volume and so on.
Obviously people have views on dairy but the tech was very cool to see up close. The dairy family could look up on their phone, any particular cow and get info on milk volume and timings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00AULJLCNo
So this is one of the first uses of a microprocessor. To paraphrase Jaron Lanier, calling tracking collars "smart" is an insult to human intelligence.
There are a lot of places where I see complicated fencing put up to manage cattle in parks where this would be extremely nice as well. Instead of breaking up a nice park with barbed wire to protect areas you could geo-fence them off.
[edit]Location is a thing they can't do by the looks of it. Guess a GPS signal is weak if being recieved in the cow.
[1] https://www.nedap-livestockmanagement.com/dairy-farming/solu... [2] https://www.nedap-livestockmanagement.com/dairy-farming/solu...
...including humans?
I'd pay for that. Like someone holding your hand through something except the memory remains afterwards. Ah, amazing. Maybe when I'm reading, someone else controls my arm to do bicep curls. Fuck me, this is amazing.
edit: Also, along the lines of "be careful what you wish for", the alltime classic "Brainstorm" from 1983 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085271 comes to mind.
Thanks for the quick reviews! :)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/04/cockroach-ro...
Edit, I suppose it could work on a dairy where a human works with the animal every day. I would be curious to know how often these things break.
AFAIK, cows are not aggressive animals unless they're physically attacked or threatened.
Do you have a link discussing this? I find it hilarious and fascinating and I'd like to learn more. Thanks!
> we instead use sound to replicate a fence line with a pulse used during the initial training period to help a cow understand the meaning of sound
This 1Hz impulse is often audible as a repetitive hum if you stand near the wire. By replicating the sound I expect you could suggest the cattle move somewhere else.
The collars here are basically the same training collars they make for dogs. They require constant recharging (at least once a week) and have other downsides like range, etc.
A fence can't move a cow from one location to another at an assigned time.
I also expect that, for cattle grazing on land that isn’t very green, fencing indeed can be expensive. Reading https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/library/ranching/stocking... (IMO worth it, if only for the heading “Not Every Cow is An Animal Unit”. That article wasn’t written by a physicist), there are areas where so little is growing that each cow needs 30+ acres of land (top-quality grassland can get close to 1 acre per cow, but such land ¿typically/always? needs care by the farmer, such as the use of fertilizer)
Larger pastures per cow means more fence per cow.