Colar monitors cows to improve milk productivity – 05/12/2023 – Tech

Collars that warn when cows are panting or in heat and record how many times and for how long they have eaten are the starting point of a technology created to increase milk production on farms in Brazil and five other countries.

Created in 2010 within the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), by brothers Leonardo Guedes, 37, an electrical engineer, and Thiago Martins, 35, a mechanical engineer, the startup Cowmed left the incubator and entered the market in 2016. Headquartered in the city gaúcha, the company helps monitor more than 40,000 animals on 444 farms in all regions of the country.

“In a herd of approximately 200 cows, you cannot monitor one by one with the naked eye. Now, early in the morning, I already look at the animals that the system has warned of a possible diversified behavior”, says Marjori Ghellar, 33, who implanted the system on your property to monitor the reproductive cycles of animals.

Captured by the collar, the information is sent to the cloud and analyzed by the VIC (Virtual Cow Interpreter), an artificial intelligence tool.

“The system helps to identify the heat of this animal, it helps to know what time the producer has to bathe the cows, because the collar knows the times when the cows are more panting, if they are eating, and the collar can identify what time and the number of times they eat”, says Guedes.

The use of collars can increase milk productivity by 15% to 20%. However, the results depend on the sanitary situation of each property, according to one of the founders of Cowmed, Leonardo Guedes. “It’s an average. It depends a lot on the challenge of each farm, as a farm that has serious health problems will have a much greater impact than one that doesn’t have so many problems.”

The purpose of monitoring is, basically, to improve the quality of life of the cows, increasing productivity. “We usually say that monitoring reflects the cow’s opinion. It’s as if the producer had one employee per cow reporting everything the animal does. This means that the same producer will lose a lot less cows because he will know early on that she will It’s a cow that could get worse many times, it wouldn’t give milk and he manages to anticipate the treatment so that this cow produces more”, says Guedes.

In Tuparendi (RS), on Ghellar’s property, the monitoring system was acquired in 2017, with the aim of anticipating problems before they turn into losses. “We had bovine parasitic sadness problems on the farm and it took time to detect the disease. When we saw it, it was already quite complex and we ended up losing some cows”, he says.

The doctor in animal production and professor at the Faculty of Agronomy and Zootechnics at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Paulo César de Faccio Carvalho, says that this type of technology integrates what is now called precision livestock. “They help with the goal of producing excellent animal production and allow you to monitor the animals more effectively and with much more information about the herds.”

Carvalho believes that the impact is different for dairy farming, depending on the scale and volume of milk produced. Thus, acquisition and operation end up being more difficult for the small producer, not least because of the price —each Cowmed collar costs around BRL 20/month per animal. “There are always those who manage to adapt very well and who are already using this technology. I believe that these are different impacts and that the small producer can feel more in his pocket.”

However, the expert notes that technologies such as collars are equipment and not the production process. “Good nutrition, genetics, health are important, these are the processes by which we can achieve high quality production.”

The executive secretary of Sindilat-RS (Rio Grande do Sul Dairy Industry Union), Darlan Palharini, says that collar technology is important for the production chain. “In addition to checking the fertile period, an aspect that helps a lot is the caloric. Especially here in the South, where the cattle are basically European, and in the summer, when the animal exceeds 37 degrees, it already has a loss of production and fertility. All this technological load that is being made available today in the dairy activity is aimed at productivity gains, but the main thing is to be able to offer the animals well-being.”

Cowmed started with its own capital and, in 2016, the first investment was made by Criatec3 of the BNDES. Then there was a second round in 2019 with local investors. Finally, in 2022, the company made a public offering of shares on a secondary exchange via Captable (a platform for investing in startups), where preferred shares were offered, that is, any user could buy shares without voting rights, being able to buy and sell any time.

The company was the first in Brazil to inaugurate this phase in the country. This last funding was approximately R$ 6 million. The founders now plan to increase market share, reaching 70,000 monitored animals by the end of this year.

In addition, technology can impact the chain as a whole, making the benefits reach the final consumer. “From the moment there is more milk on the market, there is a more stable supply and demand, and the buyer will pay an increasingly fair price, it is a virtuous chain”, completes the founder.