Smart cow collar 93% accurate
It also alerts the herdowner when cows are sick, continuously monitoring cow behavioural patterns and temperature, to determine the optimum insemination time and cow health status, and detect lameness and heat stress.
A cloud-based computerised system, it sends real-time alerts to the farmer’s smartphone or computer.
It has been tested on farms for two and a half years, and has detected 80% of heats before they were picked up by the farmer’s heat detection methods, said Padraig Lynch, Chief Operating Officer of Alanya Animal Health Monitoring, the company behind the product.
Each cow collar costs €120, and the Herdinsights base station costs €3,300.
A €4 per cow per year charge covers automatic updates, which are driven by improving technology, and are downloaded to each farm.
Collar batteries are aútomatically monitored, and are replaced for free when needed.
Remote base stations suitable for suckler herds can be used in the fields.
Padraig Lynch said sales of 1,500 units followed its launch last month at the Ploughing Championships.
Alanya was founded by Donald Cronin, and incubated at the Rubicon business innovation hub in the Cork Institute of Technology.
Investment for Alanya’s Herdinsights system came from sources such as Enterprise Ireland, Cork City Enterprise Board, and farmers.
Further development of the product took place at CIT’s Nimbus Centre for networked embedded electronic systems research.
