An Inner Mongolia dairy is a comprehensive enterprise that specializes in dairy farming and feed processing. It has a modern breeding demonstration park with 10,000 dairy cattle and enjoys the benefits of large-scale farm management. Among the smart equipment used by the enterprise, Sveaverken's feed-pushing robot has been operating reliably for three years, reducing labor costs and increasing feed intake for the cows. The Sveaverken team seized this opportunity to collaborate closely with the owner and use the park as one of the testing sites for the new generation of smart collars, MooCollar Bree. In this article, we will present the metric performance of MooCollar Bree in various aspects.
01 The challenge of monitoring 10,000 cattle - drawbacks of traditional methods
Traditional cow monitoring methods, such as manual observation and tail spraying, often fail to detect the cow's estrus and miss the best breeding time. Misjudgment of the estrus signs will cause breeding failure and frozen semen waste. Moreover, traditional methods cannot assess the cow's health condition promptly, which may postpone the optimal treatment time.
02 Product manager interview - revealing the challenges and solutions
1. What are the difficulties and pain points faced by the client
- Shortage of veterinarians and breeders who cannot make timely rounds, and solutions to detect cows in heat and sickness in time.
- Lack of behavioral data monitoring of cows' eating and rumination.
- A total of nine injections at seven-day intervals of inducing estrus in young cows. The life expectancy of cows is generally shorter than that of cows in natural estrus, resulting in a loss of farm profitability.
- Insufficient funds to put collars on all cows that qualify.
2. What are the challenges for the collar testing project
The client had used one of our competitors' collars, knew the pros and cons, and had high expectations for the accuracy. He referred to the price and features of the software and evaluated ours. At the same time, the accuracy rate of other competitors is already quite high, and it was hard to surpass it. The product's price was also a challenge, as we had to meet the functions required by the farm, but also make it affordable for all clients, to avoid the situation of some young cows not wearing collars. Fortunately, MooCollar Bree satisfies all the functions at the software level.
3. What is the action plan for this project
Considering that the competitor's software had not been updated for many years, we needed to come up with a collar with high accuracy, relatively complete functions, and relatively low price, and software functions that were more compatible with the use of modern farms. So how could the client quickly see the difference between the two products? We thought of putting our collars and the competitor's collars on the cows at the same time for long-term monitoring, to observe the effect of comparison.
4. What are the advantages of MooCollar Bree
Besides high-precision estrus and health monitoring, we also added functions that the competitor's collars lack at the same price level, such as ruminating and eating functions, to show the differentiation. Moreover, in the software, we not only provided the necessary functions, but also addressed the existing pain points in the farm, to enhance the functions, to fully meet the needs of the farm, more cost-effective, more suitable for medium and large-scale dairy farms.
03 The key to reliability: high-precision monitoring and data analysis
In this case, we conducted a three-month experiment from September to November 2023, involving 100 Holstein cows. We collected 149 estrus records through instrumental detection and mating records and manually observed the eating, rumination, and immobility behaviors of 10 randomly selected cows for 64 hours. We also collected the behavioral classification results reported by the smart collars every 2 hours and compared them with the manual observations. The results are summarized as follows:
1. Estrus detection: MooCollar Bree monitors the cows' estrus condition in real-time, with an accuracy rate of 98%, which effectively improves the breeding success rate.
2. Eating monitoring: MooCollar Bree accurately measures the eating amount of each cow, providing powerful support for fine eating management, with an accuracy rate of 98%.
3. Rumination monitoring: MooCollar Bree tracks the rumination activity of each cow in real-time, effectively assessing the cows' health and digestion, with an accuracy rate of 98%. The data is uploaded every 2 hours for easy access and analysis.
4. Health Alert: MooCollar Bree provides comprehensive and multi-dimensional data to build cattle-based health models, and detect any abnormalities caused by disease, stress, discomfort, or other health problems. MooConnect software can notify the user in time, enhancing the efficiency of the veterinarian's diagnosis and treatment, and avoiding accidental losses.
Besides the main functions mentioned above, MooCollar Bree also has auxiliary functions such as step counting and other activity statistics. Combined with eating, rumination, and other data, they can calculate and output health indices, provide timely warnings, and protect the health of cows in all aspects.
04 Case study result: health and productivity of dairy cows enhanced
1. Client's experience with competitor's collar
At the same price level, there was only estrus and rumination monitoring, but no eating monitoring, so there was no way to monitor the health of the cows in an all-around way.
2. Opportunities that the client sees in MooCollar Bree
At the same price level, there are more functions for monitoring the health of cows. In addition to estrus reminder, eating and rumination reminders, there are also reminders and records of the optimal time for breeding, as well as work orders for pregnancy check, calving and abortion, so that the cow's breeding process can be more closely watched, and the accuracy of the monitoring is higher. Sveaverken MooConnect platform can be logged in on both PC and mobile phones. The simple and clear interface fits more in line with the use habits of farm operators.
3. Client evaluation based on testing project
- Cost-effective, good all-round monitoring of cow health.
- Wide coverage of the gateway communication, only one gateway is needed for 500 cows in a barn.
- The software function is perfect, always know the activity level, and receive timely alerts of estrus and abnormalities.
4. Client suggestion for product improvement
He hopes the collar can be connected with other farm equipment such as TMR and milking machines to facilitate integrated management.
05 Customer-oriented product upgrade plan - to meet the changing market demand
With the rapid development of the dairy industry, the scale of dairy farming has been expanding, the level of farm management has been improving, and dairy farming technology has been innovating. To better meet the needs of dairy farmers in the market, the Sveaverken team has also formulated product upgrade plan.
- Continuously enrich the product matrix and develop solutions including sorting gate and precision feeding systems.
- Cooperate with milking machine manufacturers to provide closer herd health monitoring solutions for large farms.
- Integrate the positioning function to adapt to more grazing pastures.
- Integrate health and nutrition functions to manage the whole life cycle of the herd.
It has been proven that the Sveaverken MooCollar Bree is a smart device that utilizes IoT technology and data-driven analysis to achieve the monitoring of cow estrus, rumination, and eating. The principle is to collect real-time behavioral and physiological figures of cows by wearing a collar with sensors and communication modules around their necks; transmit them to a cloud server via wireless network, and generate the cow's estrus, ruminating, and eating status after data cleaning, analysis, and modeling; and provide real-time monitoring reports and early warning information to the farm managers via MooConnect platform. Thus, farm managers will know the estrus and optimal breeding period of cows, as well as abnormalities in ruminants and feed intake, to guide them to carry out scientific management measures on breeding, feeding, and epidemic prevention to improve the breeding performance and health of cows, and to enhance the economic benefits of farms.
For more product inquiries, fast quotation, or dealer recruitment campaigns, contact the Sveaverken team at [email protected].