Developing and testing sensors and technology to improve animal welfare
CowLabTM
For animal welfare
A lot of research and great innovations and implementations has been made to improve animal welfare and productivity. But there is still a lot to do.
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Quantify, quantify, quantify…
• As a trend people are quantifying themselves to make right choices and to have a positive effect to their health
• Technology ment for humans can also be used to increase animal welfare and productivity
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Sensor tehnology creates a possibility for early detection of developing illness or abnormal
behaviour which saves from a lot of trouble and money.
But…
Why a cow would be interesting?
Why cow?
Why lab?
Why CowLab?
And what is CowLab?
CowLabTM
• The unique research environment that utilizes • latest technology in milk production
• A place to develop diagnostics and IT applications for livestock production by collecting and mining data on behavior, health,
physiology and production
• CowLabTM provides a solution for comprehensive testing of new ideas and innovations in dairy cattle.
• For example, animal activity, rumination, movements and location in the barn, resting and standing times, heat, feeding behavior and milking parameters can be measured and monitored with validated equipment.
CowLabTM – Your innovation can be measured
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Biohacking cows
• Combination of technologies inside the experimental farm and the CowLabTM
cloud service form together a powerful tool like no other
• CowLabTM is a place to biohack cows and develop products, devices or applications to monitor changes in behavior, health, and productivity
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Reliable, easy, cost-efficient
• All the measurements can be done fast, automatically, cost efficiently and without disturbing the animals.
• Automation also provides the possibility to measure more than one feature simultaneously and therefore can provide a comprehensive set of data.
• Data is recorded and transferred to a cloud service where it can be easily accessed. This data can be mined to bring new insight or perspective to things that you thought were unnecessary.
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Latest technology in use
• Wireless rumination, activity, heat monitoring and portable progesterone tester
• Extensive measurements of individual cows parameters • Location, feeding, activity, health parameters, production
• Barn environment monitoring • Temperature, moisture, lighting, gases
• Large databanks for data mining
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Research barn, fact sheet
• Space for 120 dairy cows, loose housing system • Milking parlor for 2 × 8 cows, herring bone
• Additional equipment for research purposes:
• Individual feed intake can be measured at the feeding stations as well as through forage/TMR weighing troughs
• Possibility to feed different forages and concentrates as well combination of those at the same time
• 12 tied-up housing places for more individual studies • The cows have access to pasture via an electronic gate
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