SMARTBOW®- THE MOST ADVANCED DAIRY COW MONITORING SYSTEM

With labour and time at a premium on farms, many are turning to technology to ensure they are remaining as efficient as possible.

This technology, known as precision livestock farming is driving performance in all areas including drone mapping, automated feeding, milking and the analysis and integration of data. The definition of precision livestock farming is the use of advanced technologies to optimise the contribution of each animal. This per-animal approach allows the farmer to deliver better results in livestock farming. These results can be quantitative, qualitative and/or addressing sustainability.

SmartBow sensor technology truly fulfils the definition of precision livestock farming, as it allows for individual monitoring of your animals. Each animal then gets the attention it requires to ensure it is productive and delivers long term profitability to you and your farm.

WHY SMARTBOW?

SmartBow is the most advanced dairy cow monitoring system available, it uses a simple eartag to provide data on each of your animals constantly. It comes with 3 major functions;

1. Industry leading rumination monitoring with up to 99% accuracy1,2 you can identify health issues earlier. The health function is based on the rumination behaviour of the individual cow. The ear moves continuously when a cow is ruminating and the individual pattern is detected by the acceleration sensor in the eartag.

Two different alerts can be generated to give you an indication of a potential health issue the animal may have. These can be either; an acute decline in rumination, where rumination decreases significantly over a few hours or a long-term decline in rumination, where it is shown over several days. As every animal has a distinctively different rumination pattern, each animal serves as its own reference. This pattern depends on factors such as; age, stage of lactation and the composition of feed. Every alert generated will be individual to the cow, thus enabling the high level of accuracy.

Rumination monitoring provides huge benefits to the farm as an early detection system for disease. This means potential disease may be identified before outward clinical signs are detected enabling immediate assessment and treatment if necessary. Earlier, accurate treatment can result in a faster recovery and return to productivity and profitability. There’s also the added potential for reduced medicine usage. Monitoring also gives objective feedback on well-being and productivity across the herd.

2. Unparalleled heat detection with 97% accuracy3, saving time and increasing insemination success. SmartBow detects 80,000 values a day from each animal analysing activity levels to give you highly accurate, around the clock, heat detection.

In addition to freeing up labour time from heat detection, the system also indicates an ideal time for insemination thus allowing for a greater chance of the animal getting in calf. This leads to better fertility KPIs for the farm including, submission rate, conception rate, days open and calving interval.

The heat is highlighted visually on both the App and the PC as in the image below, showing the timing of bulling, alerts are also generated via email and SMS to let you know instantaneously.

3. Live location tracking; know where each of your cows are 24/7, to save time and labour finding them. Each eartag sends out a signal, the time it takes for that signal to reach different receivers is measured, allowing for the exact position of the cow to be determined, this is then displayed on a digital map on PC, Smartphone or Tablet.

3. Live location tracking; know where each of your cows are 24/7, to save time and labour finding them. Each eartag sends out a signal, the time it takes for that signal to reach different receivers is measured, allowing for the exact position of the cow to be determined, this is then displayed on a digital map on PC, Smartphone or Tablet.