The Internet of Cows is moo-ving fast … no bull!

If you worry the Internet of Things is bollocks and that the industry's just milking an old idea, think again: research outfit Arcluster has declared that the “Connected Cow and Farm” market will become a US$10.75 billion concern in 2021, a rather nice jump from today's $1.27 billion. Byte-blowing bovines are going to drive …

[Refugee from Windows]

Not exactly a developing market

I can name a number of players in this market, for both fertility management, robotic milking and general automation, so it's hardly a new opportunity.

Maybe it'll produce a new opening for the likes of Google? Will cow collars suddenly start to play advertisements for a feed company?

The cows? Well so long as they get fed, access to the cow brush and generally pampered they'll be happy if they're connected or not. Saying that, the state of some of the "broadband" in rural areas of the UK I'd say not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hardly a new opportunity.

Exactly. Agriculture has been using AI for a very long time (in IT timescales).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hardly a new opportunity.

And in the days when the Milk Marketing Board was in existence (yes, that long ago) there was a "Bull and Cow Evaluation Unit" (yes, really).

A database of bull and cow hereditary lines, with milk yield analysis, the better to maximise it. It was spun out into a private company when the MMB was closed and its Hinchley Wood offices turned into housing. I forget the name, but it was Genus or something like that.

Only remember it 'coz we supplied ICL terminal emulator software to them for their mainframe connectivity.

And when the entire industry has used AI for decades, quite where "mating" comes (sorry) into the picture is beyond me.

[Ian Michael Gumby]

@ Refugee from Windblowz ... Re: Not exactly a developing market

Not only is it not a new idea or concept, its not even a viable one.

IT in Ag makes sense in a couple of applications.

1) Farm equipment automation.

2) Soil testing / sampling

3) data tracking... from birth to store.

Just to name a few.

The farm equipment can be automated due to the use of GPS w ground station. This will help reduce labor costs and will help with labor shortages. (Certain farm work is back breaking and not many people are willing to do it. )

Add to this the ability to test soil around the farm and you can better tune your fertilizer use as well as join this data with farm yields. Could even help improve some of the organic methods on the farms.

In terms of data tracking, some numb nutz wanted to create collars and then beam the data up to a data center to track the animals so that they could monitor the health of the animals. The issue is that you need to wire your farm. So how much do you think it will cost to wire up a 300+ acre farm with wi-fi? and then transmitters back to your central access point? Not cheap or easy. Not to mention the potential for theft. Then there's a question about what value do you get? If the animal is sick you could provide meds earlier, but again at what cost? Especially when you consider that you have cows that sometimes ignore their calfs (especially first time cows), delivery isn't always easy and cows and calf can die. Calf gets ill from mother's milk... on average you can lose up to 4 calfs and a couple of cows a year. (Depending on varmints) The cost of the tech far exceeds the benefits.

But tracking data is a bit different.

You can buy cheap RFID tags. You can monitor the cows, what you feed them, weight, and what meds you give them when you work the herd twice a year. This would help to establish and certify good farming practices.

Sorry, but there are limits and the smaller farmers can't afford to waste money because the benefits just aren't there. (Outside of the examples I gave)

This comes from practical experience where I am in IT and while father-in-law was alive, he lived on a farm and I 'volunteered' to work the herd as well as invest in a couple of his bulls to help grow the herd.

There is too much hype and when you crunch the numbers... it doesn't work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh,

In America there are herds of cattle "on the plains" fitted with collars that implement a digital fence, if the cow gets a little close to this virtual boundary, zap! When you need to move onto fresher pasture you can simply transmit new boundaries to the collars. I think this level of tech is fairly new but it is seemingly cost effective enough to have been developed and deployed. It was/is certainly being looked at in Epping forest (or somewhere similar) as a way of keeping the cattle away from the public areas.

Collars and Pedometers on cows are already widely deployed and can can tell you a great deal about a cows health and fertility status. you don't need 100% coverage and live tracking for this to work. There are some places a cow simply has to be, every cow has to go the water trough. Every dairy cow will need to get to the dairy parlour or robot milking station, so only need those places to be "wired".

Dairy cows in particular were using things like RFID long before it became the buzzword it is today, it shouldn't come as any surprise that an industry as large and valuable as this is at the forefront of emerging technologies. When you have 300-1000 cows worth £1200+ each you can justify a fair spend on keeping those animals in peak health and productivity.

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: Huh,

An invisible fence isn't the same thing.

Really? You have to think about it.

And yes, RFID chips are used in data tracking.

That's not doing anything but marking the animal.

And you have to have a reader. That's usually found on the head gate. (You do know what the head gate is, right?

RFID tags, ear tags, are roughly $2.50 or less in quantity. Calves and Cows don't go to market that high. At least not in the states although YMMV.

[Paul Woodhouse]

is clearing up the bullshit gonna get automated to?, can think of a few more places that might be useful.

[collinsl]

It is already in a lot of places - because the waste is mainly a gloop rather than solid a lot of sheds have a long bar which drag across the floor once an hour or so to push the waste into a drain, where it can be captured and stored for fertiliser etc. The cows simply step over the bar and as long as everything else (feeders mainly) is kept off the floor then it can work unimpeded.

[Paul Woodhouse]

damn, that could certainly be useful in the House of Commons, except the bar should be set at oh, about 3' high and should move a damn site faster....

[annodomini2]

"damn, that could certainly be useful in the House of Commons, except the bar should be set at oh, about 3' high and should move a damn site faster...."

5' and Sharp

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Cleaning up BS?

If you could automate that... then there would be a lot of reporters and most of the press out of work.

This year's political races around the world (including the US) are full of it.

[Chris G]

Social

I see a great opportunity here for connected cows to socially network, Moospace comes to mind. A happy cow is a productive cow, ask my ex wife!

[Ian Michael Gumby]

Re: Social

There are usually 1 bull to 20 or 40 cows ...

Not much of a social life.

[m0rt]

Coming up in the next DEFCON...

...how to hack a cow.

[Down not across]

Re: Coming up in the next DEFCON...

Cow-tipping will never be the same

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Coming up in the next DEFCON...

"Cow-tipping will never be the same"

Yeah, remote cow-tipping via a smartphone app - kids have it too easy these days.

[Jay 2]

So shall we expext to see a bovine-related version of Tinder sometime soon then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why only cows?

I think many humans may found the possibilities attractive.

[Vinyl-Junkie]

In udder news....

IGMC

[Doctor Syntax]

And for sheep...

...Tupperware.

[David Harper 1]

Re: And for sheep...

You win the Internet for today, Doctor Syntax :-)

[Clive Galway]

Mating Control

Simples.

RFID controlled "chastity belts" for the females, activated by RFID chips mounted on the bellies of the males.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Now were going to have cows posting their fitbit results to facebook where absolutely nobody gives a shit about how many steps you walked today. As for twitter that's got enough daft cows as it is, no more please. Where will this madness end?

[oiseau]

"Where will this madness end?"

+1

Because I cannot upvote you twice or more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

IoT meets BS

natural bedfellows, marketing buzzword and bovine by-products?

[Mark 85]

Re: IoT meets BS

Ah... such as this: Nirmal reckons connected cows and other down-on-the-farm tech represents “a fresh and solid opportunity for service providers, equipment manufacturers, software vendors, value investors and stakeholders."

Ok.. there's nothing in his statement about the benefit to the farmer. It's all about corporates and bottom lines. Cows and stakeholders... really?

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: IoT meets BS

"Ok.. there's nothing in his statement about the benefit to the farmer. It's all about corporates and bottom lines. Cows and stakeholders... really?"

Congratulations - you have mastered capitalism!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone deserves a pat on the back.....

[ChrisMcD]

That looks like too small a market estimate to me!

Cows like to be milked more than twice a day, so automation had been growing steadily for years and is very easy to justify financially (and the farmers get to sleep in!).

So, I suspect that the market is a lot bigger than $1.27 billion already

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_milking

Each cow had an electronic tag, so a computer can monitor it's arrival at the milking station and "rewarded" it with feed when it turns up, or turn it away of it is trying to get an extra snack!

Cows have to be monitored very closely to make sure that they are healthy, well fed, producing lots of milk etc Again, this has been computerised for years. And the genetics are hugely complicated/profitable since the bull's genetic contribution has a huge effect on milk yield in the daughter cow. Hundreds of daughter cows milk production is monitored over years to establish which bulls produce the most prolific daughters and the money involved is huge.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/frozen-bulls-semen-worth-47000-5515141

Apparently very few bulls make the big time but they are worth millions!

Just one thing needs to be sorted now. At that price you need to be very sure your cow is "receptive" -before you get out your long reach latex gloves - and the latest trick is to monitor cows behaviour to spot the "bulling" that indicates she is in the right state.

Much more effective than gluing a paint patch to her bum for her sisters to burst open!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS6eD6iJJIw

So, plenty of open air opportunities for burnt out sysadmins!

[Anonymous Coward]

Connected cows ain't what is needed

Cleaner CAFOs would be better - those things produce mountains of shit.

[Voland's right hand]

What mating management

A prize bull can consider himself lucky to mate even once in his life.The poor sod is milked same as cows (slightly different equipment and stimulation methods) and his juice injected in the selected "offspring carriers".

Anyone who has delusions of "mating management" in cows needs to see how a modern farm operates. There is some of it left in other parts of the industry (sheep, goats, etc), but not a lot. Cows - it is all mechanical.

[Kev99]

Can you ask for any better proof that the "internet of things" is a bunch of bull sh**.

[oldtaku]

We're all Connected Cows

I thought 'Connected Cow Farm' was a brilliant term for the Internet of Shitty Insecure Things before I read the article and found out the cows are not figurative.

[Martin Maloney]

Is this tech for real?

You wouldn't give us a bum steer, would you?

[Gobhicks]

Classic 23 there in the pic...

... what can it mean? And Pokemon Go is just another step in conditioning the population for when the real aliens come out onto the streets.