Sensors augment calf care
Keeping an eye on calves has gone high tech. More than just fancy tools, sensors for calf care can help farmers carefully monitor their animals for the earliest signs of poor health to help curtail more serious problems and possibly stall an outbreak of illness.
Taika von Königslöw, DVM, assistant professor in the Department of Population Medicine & Diagnostic Sciences in Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, presented “Sensor Technologies in Calf Health Monitoring” as part of Cornell’s “Boots in the Barn” webinar series.
Sensors in dairy can include wearable devices, such as ear tags, collars and anklets; invasive, embedded devices; non-contact devices such as cameras; and non-continuous sensors that trip on with movement. The level of personalization includes herd-level monitoring, individual monitoring or personalized monitoring.
“These sensors can be used to monitor and manage productivity, environmental impact, animal health, food quality and food safety,” von Königslöw said.
Digital agriculture affects milk quality as well as individual, herd-level, environmental, performance and financial metrics.
“There’s a period of maturation, immunological maturation and multiple stressful life transitions like being debudded or bred,” von Königslöw said.
The focus of bovine research has been much more on maturation than on calves, even though calf health affects farm finances. Traditional calf health monitoring includes records, visual inspection, health scoring, measuring growth, sample collection and lab or POC devices.
“You can use sample collection to send to labs to get more information,” von Königslöw said. “Sensor-driven calf health monitoring includes physical sensing. Accelerometry shows different features in the animals. There’s visual sensing, biomarker sensing, production metrics, technology that’s wearable, non-wearable or embedded. The human’s role is direct engagement and oversight.”
Sensors can monitor information for determining health risks, future health and performance and suggest intervention strategies.
One of von Königslöw’s research projects involves using pressure, temperature and sound sensing technology on calf-feeding nipples.
“We wrapped a nipple with pressure-sensing film,” she said. “By offering this to the calf, they suckled for 15 seconds and we had an impression of the inside of the calves’ mouths.”
This could help get an idea of healthy suckle pressure for indicating when calves were sick.
Taking calf temperatures can also indicate ill health. Although oral temperature-taking is commonly used for detecting fever in humans, it’s used less in calves.
“There’s moderate to strong correlation between oral temperature and rectal temperature,” von Königslöw said.
Some of her unpublished data show an association between calves’ oral temperature and bovine respiratory disease. She also observed a correlation between temperature that deviates from the mean calf temperature and neonatal calf diarrhea.
Evaluating calf lungs can also help sense respiratory illness. “Health-scoring lung ultrasound work requires extensive training and equipment,” von Königslöw noted.
Less expensive sensors can provide easier access to these type of data as the equipment requires less training than ultrasound.
Developing multimodal sensing technology that senses pressure and temperature for dairy calves can be complicated. “It has to withstand being chewed on and getting wet,” von Königslöw said.
Electronics typically do not have to withstand that kind of treatment. They must either have some type of chargeable battery or power source, which can be tricky in many ag operations.
For non-contact sensing, biosensing ink may be able to provide continuous monitoring of biomarkers and physiologic parameters without electrical requirements.
“The idea here is to look at some different ways we can apply this,” von Königslöw said. “Potentially, it could be patches that can go on a cow’s back so you can see whether your cooling methods are working at the level of the animal.”
As another application, calf jackets in cold weather could also be able to detect fever. “It doesn’t require electrical energy and is able to get wet,” she added.
Using thermochromic ink, researchers sought to find a mix that would have a target activation temperature of 38º C (100.4º F). After dyeing the fabrics, they were washed to test for fading. Microfiber and polyester faded, but cotton did not.
Researchers found that the sample showed color ranging from orange to transparent. The color changed even when the fabric was wet. The color change became more visible at 40º C/104º F and increasing water temperature resulted in a more significant and faster color change.
“Reversible colorimetric biosensing provides a visual cue without requiring electrical energy, which is exciting,” von Königslöw said.
Another visual means of monitoring calf health – computer vision for automated calf respiratory health scoring – is another area von Königslöw is researching.
“If you take a look at the BRD health scores, these are the visible features we used to identify them,” she said – ear posture and the condition of the nose and eyes.
“You can get the most natural behavior if it’s non-contact, if the animal is not aware of the sensing,” she added.
Since computer vision is undetected by the animals, they behave naturally and provide more accurate data for farmers to analyze.
