Precision livestock farming

Precision Livestock® farming (PLF) is made possible by monitoring each individual animal or by statistical analysis. Although this sounds very much like 21st century technology (which is indeed a key enabler), one could argue that precision farming is anything but new. It is not so long ago that most farmers knew each of the animals by name. Moreover, a farmer could typically point out who the parents were and sum up other important characteristics. Each animal was approached as an individual. Variety existed, but was no issue. In the past three decades, farms have multiplied in scale, with highly automated processes for feeding and other tasks. Not surprisingly, farmers currently work with average values per group. Variety has become an impediment to increasing economies of scale.

This is where PLF comes in. Using modern information technology, farmers now can record numerous attributes of each animal, such as pedigree, age, reproduction, growth, health, feed conversion, killing out percentage (carcass weight as percentage of its live weight) and meat quality. When this information is available (and easy to apply – a subject to which we will return later), huge benefits can be derived. Culling, currently typically done on age, can now be done on the basis of reproduction values plus killing out percentage plus meat quality plus health. The result is significantly higher reproduction outcomes, with each newborn also contributing to a higher meat value.

In addition to these economic goals, precision livestock farming supports societal goals: food of high quality and general safety, animal farming that is efficient but also sustainable, healthy animals and well being of animals and a low footprint of livestock production to the environment.[1]

The regulatory and societal requirements to livestock farming are of growing complexity. This results in larger organizations and the use of complex machinery and IT systems.[1]

The key to unlock the potential of Precision Livestock® farming is consistently collecting information of each animal. For this, there are several technologies: Unique ID, Electronic wearables to identify illness and other issues, Software, Machine Vision, etc.

Each animal requires a unique number (typically by means of an eartag). This can be utilized through a visual ID, passive electronic ID tag or even an active electronic ID tag. For example, at birth, the farmer selects "Birth" from the menu on the reader, after which the interactive screen requests the user to read the tag of the mother. Next, tags are inserted in the ears of newborns and read. With this simple action, important information is recorded, such as:

• who is the mother
• how many siblings did she deliver
• what is the gender of each sibling
• what is the date of birth

Electronic wearables such as an active smart ear tag can get data from individual animals such as temperature and activity patterns. This data can be utilized in identification of illness, heat stress, estrous, etc. This enables individualized care for the animals and methods to lower stress upon them. The end result is judicious use of drug treatments and nutrition to bolster healthy growth. This provides livestock producers with the tools to identify sick animals sooner and more accurately. This early detection leads to reduction in costs by lowering re-treatment rate and death loss, and getting animals back to peak performance faster.

Another piece of technology users need is software. By using readers which are wirelessly connected to the internet, data is processed immediately on servers, and the results are instantly available. In the past, people have used plain old readers. Sometimes, users forgot to sync these devices with their PC for many weeks. The result is that the precision farming data becomes outdated, and thus useless. Moreover, connected readers can download important information wherever you are. For example, if you want to check the passport of a certain animal, you simply read the tag and all relevant information is immediately visible on your handheld, over the mobile internet. Due to high computational requirements, precision livestock farming requires computer-supported tools. The following types (available for PCs and via Internet) are available:

• Induction/processing software applications (a necessity for use with electronic active ID tags)
• Automated Livestock Administration software
• Reproduction Optimization software
• Feed formulation software
• Quality management software

Precision Livestock® management (PLM) is the continuous management of livestock using real-time automated processes to monitor animal reproduction, welfare, production, and environmental impacts.[5] Benefits to using PLM include automating traditionally labor-intensive processes, providing in depth information that would otherwise be unattainable, using real-time automated processes to monitor reproduction, health and welfare, production, and environmental impact.[6] There are tools available for all different livestock animals.

Robotic Milkers

Automatic cattle feeder [7]

A robotic milker can be used for precision management of dairy cattle. The main advantages are time savings, greater production, a record of valuable information, and diversion of abnormal milk. There are many brands of robots available including Lely, DeLavel.

There are limited number of software tools for the poultry industry. A well known software named AbuErdan [15] is used to monitor poultry flocks' performance, identify issues during cycles and integrate performance from multiple value chain stages.

Precision Livestock® farming is all about recognizing the individual properties of each animal. That brings huge benefits to a farmer, but the buck doesn't stop there. Abattoirs, for example, can do exactly the same. More and more slaughterhouse deploy Slaughter Registration Systems. Such systems reads each tag at the moment of slaughtering, after which the carcasses are traced through the abattoir. When the ready-to-sell carcass is moved into storage, the tagnumber and other slaughterdata (such as weight, quality, fat and customer) are added to the carcass. The pertinent slaugherdata (carcass weight, quality, fat) are fed back to the farmer, who can use this data to improve his farming.