Vishvas Chitale, director of Chitale Dairy in Bhilawadi, India, explains how they deploys a “cows-to-cloud” strategy to increase the milk yield.
Farmers access the data in a cloud portal and use the data to help with animal trading. To monitor the cows, Chitale Dairy places Allflex RFID tags in cows’ ears to receive information on whether the animals are in heat or need to be vaccinated or dewormed. This information is transmitted via the cloud to farmers’ mobile devices.
Chitale Dairy call center, which sends the data to a mobile app, with the RFID number matching up with a particular cow. The farm then sends a to-do list to farmers in their local language each morning on what each cow needs based on the data collected from the RFID signals. (Companies such as Allflex, GEA and Y-Tex offer these RFID tags.)
Chitale Dairy maintains a database of 10,000 animals, along with a complete progeny and medical history. Chitale Dairy uses the data to track blood profiles and the nutrition requirements of cows, such as whether the animals are getting the proper iron or calcium. From the data received by RFID tags, Chitale Dairy performs mineral mapping and blood profiling.
Monitoring the data allows Chitale Dairy to increase milk production by more than 5 liters per animal, Chitale said. The sensors also keep track of how much a cow eats per day.
“Sensors also can track if a cow is running a fever or hasn’t eaten in 48 hours,”
“Analysis of the data could lead to checking the health of a cow, including taking the temperature and giving calcium.”
Despite the advantages that big data brings to agriculture and milk production, farmers may not have the time to absorb all this data. To solve the problem, farmers will need to have someone dedicated to spending at least an hour a day analyzing big data. As technology continues to become smarter and more user friendly I think we will be seeing a lot more of Big Data in the farming industry.
via [TC]
