The first commercial unit of a smart cattle drinker with the ability to record cattle weights has been revealed at the National Ploughing Championships (NPC).
The piece of technology is known as BovinePlus and was developed by Reap Interactive. The mastermind behind the technology is Kieran Supple from Boyle, Co. Roscommon.
Agriland caught up with the inventor at Ploughing 2024 to find out more about the unit that has the ability to record cattle weights while they are using the drinker.
The Reap Interactive CEO Kieran Supple said:
“We were here testing the market with it [the concept] two years ago, and we took all that feedback away with us, and we went out then and basically put all that into use and came up with the commercial product you see here today.”
Ploughing 2024 is the first time the new invention has been publicly on display.
Supple added: “It’s ready to go and this is the first of our commercial units. We’re getting good traction on it.”
Cattle drinker
Explaining how the technology works, he said: “As the animal comes in, they stand up on it. It captures their weight, it captures their water consumption and reads their tag, so it’s getting away from herd averages looking at individual animals, back to unit economics.”
What is perhaps most interesting about the technology, is that only two of the animal’s four legs are on the weighbridge when the weight is being recorded.
Supple explained: “[Through the technology,] we learn about the animal and we build what we call a behavioural analysis for that animal. So, after four days, we know exactly how that animal looks and behaves.
“As well as giving the accurate weight for the animal, we will also be able to give you back health issues with that animal, so if that animal starts going off its daily behavioural pattern and starts losing weight, we’ll put up flags on the software to say that animal has a health issue.”
He explained that the drinker is the incentivise for cattle to regularly use the machine and said: “Animals go in to get a drink -that’s the incentivise.
“Measuring the quantity of water consumed is becoming a big thing. A lot of research is going into that now, and early signs is showing the more you can get animals drinking, the better for converting food.
“Same applies for dairy cows, the more you can get them drinking, the better in the milk tank.”
The unit is capable of working both indoors or outdoors.
When used indoors, “you just plug it in” but when being used in the field, “you attach a solar panel and everything is driven off a sim card in the device. Everything goes to the cloud, and we’ll give you the data back on your phone on the app”, according to Supple.
The technology will give farmers information on how every animal is performing individually.
“If you’re outdoors, you can move it with a trailer, lifting eyes or a bale carrier – all options are available to move it from paddock to paddock,” he added.
He said there is currently a significant amount of interest in the product: “The biggest interest at the moment is for use indoors, where there is high feed costs, so you can really see how every animal is doing.
“If you have an animal eating €4-5 feed/day, you want to make sure they’re performing for you.”