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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