IoT-Enabled Livestock Monitoring: Simplifying Livestock Management System
Emerging nations, especially countries such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, and Indonesia, are observing massive growth in livestock product consumption. This robust growth in the developing regions is largely propelled by the growing disposable incomes, which in turn have stimulated the growth in the consumption of animal source foods and increased urban population.
Growing livestock herd size globally is driving an imperative need to enhance productivity by employing efficient systems to simplify the management of large volumes of animals. With the world connected via the internet, it becomes nearly impossible for us to imagine life without the Internet of Things (IoT), which includes livestock management.
What is IoT-enabled livestock management?
Smart devices and IoT solutions are potentially transforming the farming and livestock sectors. Livestock monitoring using IoT helps resolve many problems faced in the livestock industry and helps ranchers to keep track of their livestock in real-time.
With the rapid employment of precision livestock farming solutions and efficient management of livestock enterprises, farmers can enhance production yield by increasing inputs in the IoT solutions for their cattle.
Traditional methods of livestock monitoring, which are both costly and highly unreliable, involve individually inspecting animals for signs of disease or injury. Moreover, with the increasing livestock herd size, it has become unmanageable for farmers to manually monitor each animal in such large groups.
Thus, growing herd size globally has stemmed an imperative need to enhance livestock productivity by employing efficient monitoring systems to simplify the management of large volumes of animals.
The global livestock monitoring and management market is growing due to the substantial support of the government in terms of investments, favorable initiatives, and trade policies.
Owing to these factors, the livestock monitoring and management market is expected to grow at a high CAGR of 17.8% from 2016 to 2021.
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How are IoT solutions helpful in livestock management systems?
An IoT-enabled livestock monitoring system allows farmers to remotely keep a check on their farm animals.
The livestock industry faces many problems, such as:
- No track of livestock if the number is significant
- High animal mortality rate
- No track of lost farm animal
- Sickness in animals through noxious things
Moreover, the uncertainty of input costs in livestock operations and dropping margins on commoditized livestock products are propelling the need for proficient and enhanced livestock monitoring solutions.
With IoT solutions, a collar or tag is worn by the animals containing battery-powered sensors that can monitor the location, blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate of animals and send the data wirelessly to farmers’ devices in near-real-time.
These battery-powered sensors indicate farmers to check in on the location and health of each individual animal in their herd from anywhere while they also receive alerts if any unusual activity is monitored outside of the normal range.
IoT-based livestock monitoring solutions include GPS for temperature tracking to determine the peak of the mating season and to gather and store historical data on preferred grazing spots. These are time-efficient solutions that allow farmers to know immediately which livestock is affected and which is not rather than physically checking the vitals of each individual animal.
What are the key benefits of IoT-enabled livestock management?
The advent of innovative livestock management systems has resulted in reduced energy consumption and overall cost-effective operations.
Some of the key benefits of IoT-based livestock management are:
- Keen monitoring of the health and vitality of livestock, enabling farmers to quickly treat animals and prevent the spread of illness or disease in real-time
- Easy tracking of grazing animals to identify their grazing patterns and prevent loss
- Gathering historical data to identify trends in cattle health and analyzing the spreading illness in cattle
- Preventing the loss of new calves and optimizing breeding practices while monitoring the readiness for mating
The rapid penetration of IoT technology in livestock farming practices has led to the enhancement in productivity levels by minimizing manual labor and providing an efficient platform for proper management.
Increasing implementation of cloud-based software systems, wherein shared resources and data are provided to computers and other devices on demand, has fueled the livestock monitoring and management market.
Conclusion
Livestock monitoring and management systems have applications that cover most of the operations performed in a livestock farm, including milk harvesting, animal health monitoring and comfort, feeding management, heat stress and fertility monitoring, and others.
With the increasing growth in the global market, companies operating in this industry are coming up with collaborative strategies in order to sustain themselves in the intensely competitive market.
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