An Australian company is testing a camera system that watches every animal in a feedlot pen around the clock and tells pen riders which ones may be getting sick. The system, Bovision, is being developed on two Queensland feedlots owned by the Penfold family, who run the Four Daughters Beef brand, and two more Queensland feedlots will install it before the end of the year.
Cofounder and CEO George Gleeson said the idea is to support pen riders, not replace them. “Cattle are very good at hiding when they’re crook,” he said, “and by the time an animal looks sick it has often been going downhill for a day or two.”
The system uses cameras overlooking the pen and more cameras at the water troughs. Each time an animal drinks, a trough camera reads the NLIS ear tag it already wears and confirms its identity, so nothing has to be fitted to the animal or charged by the crew.
From that, the software builds a picture of each animal’s normal behaviour: how often it visits the feed bunk and trough, how much it moves, how long it lies down and where it sits in the pen. An animal that is falling ill often changes these habits first, by going off feed, drinking less or hanging back from the group, and the system flags it along with where to find it.
The technology is still in trials. For the first few months it will record and learn while feedlot teams share their pen rider pulls and treatment records, so that what the system sees can be checked against what experienced staff see. The company aims to send the first alerts to pen riders early next year and run those trials for at least six months before discussing a commercial rollout.
Bovision is also looking at thermal cameras at the water trough to monitor body temperature and heat stress, though that work is at an earlier stage. Gleeson is one of five emerging agrifood leaders from Australia and New Zealand selected for the evokeAG Groundbreakers Program.
Source: Beef Central
Comments
(0)