Wearable devices have been one of the biggest trends in healthcare over the last few years.  What began as largely a range of fitness type devices has rapidly grown to include all manner of health and wellbeing services.

What is perhaps less well known is the growth in wearable devices for animals, and in particular farm animals.

Wearables on the farm

For instance, a study from the University of Calgary is fitting cows with accelerometers to detect activity levels, and therefore the health of the cattle.  The hope is that this will provide an early warning for diseases.

I’ve written previously about the growing trend for drone technology to be deployed on farms, and whilst farmers have shown a strong propensity to employ cutting edge technologies, cattle farmers have been a bit slower on the uptake, largely because of the subtle differences between beef and dairy cattle.

This makes transferring technology between the two herds somewhat challenging.  The researchers hope however that their relatively simple approach to spotting disease will prove particularly useful.

“By the time the cows show clinical signs of disease, it’s quite late in the disease process, up to seven days after infection,” they say.

Spotting disease

The accelerometers were attached to the ID tags in the ears of each cow, with the information allowing the farmer to know how much time the cow spent eating, chewing cud, moving around and resting.

The tags were made by Agis Automatisering, and the Dutch company also provide analytics that allow the farmer to interpret the movements of their herd.

The belief is that identifying changes in behavior, especially around eating, is a good way to identify potential illness nice and early.

The approach is still very much in the experimental stage, and more research will be required before it can be a proven approach at identifying disease in cattle, but with the advantages of such early warning systems so vast, it is surely an approach that warrants such investigation.