When cows go to the cloud

Roberto Saracco February 13, 2018 Blog 967 Views

An RFID tag identifies a cow. A “virtual cow” in the cloud is connected via beacons and a cell phone to the real one and applications provide the farmer with spot on guidance resulting in significant improvement of cows health. Credit: Chitale Dairy

This is nothing new, it is about an Indian company, Chitale Dairy, that back in 2015 started to use technology to improve farmers’ herds health, resulting in more milk being produced and increased farmers’ wealth. After 2 years they are managing over 200,000 cows in the state of Maharashtra through their “Cows in the Cloud” program.

Per sé it is no rocket science technology: each cow has been injected an RFID tag that uniquely identifies it. Beacons in the stable track the cow and sensors can detect an abnormal rise in temperature.
Each cow has its own digital twin in the cloud. These digital twins are used by software applications to check on the (real) cows and signal, via SMS -normal cell phone, no smartphone required- that a cow needs vaccination, another requires vet attention and so on. The software uses the digital twin to evaluate the milk production (variations beyond certain thresholds may signal a problem requiring attention) and compare the situation of many digital twins related one another (e.g. in a same area, same farm, having received same fodder…) in search for anomalies.

By the way: Chitale Dairy is not calling their “Cows in the Cloud” digital twin, but this is just what they are!