Recording tracking behaviour of dairy cows with wireless technologies

Abstract

The trend of growing farm sizes is expected to continue in the coming decades. Increased herd sizes should not lead to less attention for the health and welfare of the individual animal. Moreover societal requirements for food safety and quality and for the production environment increase. Current developments in wireless sensor technology provide good possibilities for real-time acquisition of information about the production environment (climate, weather, housing) and production factors (animal, food, pasture). Localization and tracking of individual animals also contains interesting information for operational management decisions. Examples are data about social interactions in a herd (ranking, grouping and seclusion behaviour) and frequency and duration of visits to interesting locations in barn or pasture (milking robot, feeding station, water trough and pasture border). An overview of available localization technologies is presented. The application of a wireless sensor network using received signal strength (RSS) for a simple localization protocol is discussed based on experimental data. Finally possible development directions for a future localization and tracking system are suggested.