Dairy herds – the moooove to wearable technology #Wearablewednesday
Monitoring this data can result in faster disease recognition for happier healthier cows, Via Food and farm Technology
The Fitbit has been around for over a decade now, in that time it’s been encouraging humans to be more active and has no doubt helped to improve the health of millions. In more recent years the smartwatch has taken a fair chunk of the fitness tracking market (to the detriment of Fitbit’s share price) but there’s a growing market for fitness wearables… the customers have four legs and four stomachs.
Researchers at Tarleton State University’s SW Regional Dairy Center in Stephenville, Texas, have recently been trialling Fitbit-like devices on cow herds. These bovine wearables enable the team at TSU to track the day to day activities of each cow in the herd – from time spent eating and sleeping to steps taken and even total milk yield.
“Much like you might use a Fitbit to monitor your steps to improve your health, we use Fitbits here with our cows to monitor their health and day to day behaviour” says Dr Barbara Jones, Director of Tarleton State University, SW Regional Dairy Center.
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Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!