As extreme heat gripped much of the world in summer 2023, many people struggled to stay cool. They weren’t the only ones: Using electricity-gobbling giant barn fans and misting machines that sucked thousands of gallons of water, farmers did all they could to keep their dairy cows from overheating, which not only stresses the cows, but also leads to reduced milk production.
As a smarter and less expensive alternative, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is using an innovative electrical device called an eTag to monitor the temperature of individual cows in real time to gain a better understanding of their behavior under stress. They hope to scale up to a smart system that can automatically identify heat-stressed animals and deploy cooling measures. They presented their research in October 2023 during the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, which also published their work in its proceedings.
“The overarching objective of this project is to detect and mitigate heat stress in dairy cattle, because it is a daunting challenge in terms of economics, animal welfare and environmental aspects,” says Younghyun Kim, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UW-Madison and primary investigator on the project. “Even in Wisconsin, severe heat has become a threat to the industry.”
His interdisciplinary team at UW-Madison includes Christopher Choi, a professor of biological systems engineering; Jennifer Van Os, an assistant professor and extension specialist in animal and dairy sciences; and Sabrina Brounts, a clinical professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine.
In the first step of their project, the team developed and implemented a monitoring system using devices they call eTags. They implanted temperature sensors about the size of a rice grain at the base of the cows’ necks, similar to the ID microchips used in pets. Connected to small devices clipped to the animals’ ears, the sensors delivered real-time temperature data every five minutes. Every time the cows visited the milking parlor, wireless charging coils recharged the devices, similar to the pads used to wirelessly charge cell phones.
Over summer 2022 in the dairy barns on the UW-Madison campus, the team gathered data on the cows’ temperature and their physiological response to the heat. In summer 2023, at the UW-Madison Arlington Agricultural Research Station, the team continued to collect temperature data and, using cameras, gathered a broader range of information including the animals’ postures and movements when the thermometer went up.
In the next phase of this research, the team plans to connect the temperature data with the visual data to determine common signs of bovines in distress, creating algorithms to identify heat-stressed animals from their movements and posture. Ultimately, the researchers hope to take the eTags out of the equation entirely and develop a low-cost system that relies only on cameras in barns to identify overheated cows.
Source: wisc.edu
Photo Credit: gettyimages-r-j-seymour
Categories: Wisconsin, Livestock, Dairy Cattle