BBC Farm Week came to Northern Ireland to see how farmers are using AI. One of its stops was to the McMaster family farm on Islandmagee, where the CattleEye system closely monitors the herd.
George McMaster started out milking eight cows at a byre. These days he checks on his herd from a chair.
“Never did I think I’d be sitting in front of the screen, and I started off milking eight cows,” he told the programme. “Absolutely incredible to move from all hands to sitting on a phone watching what’s happening outside.”
“Just over the past five years, all the technology has just appeared out of nowhere.”
A camera over the race
George’s son Jack is taking over the running of the farm. A camera and CattleEye’s AI algorithm watches the cows walking out through the race on their way back to the cow house.
For Jack, it comes down to cow health.
“If cows are in better health, we get more milk and they’re happier,” he says. “Happy cows make happy farmers.”
What the camera does
CattleEye works with standard 2D cameras above the milking parlour exit. As each cow walks underneath, the AI scores her mobility and body condition. It typically scores every cow every milking, on par with a trained mobility scorer, present and delivering objective, consistent scoring 365 days a year. No tags. No collars. No wearables.
It adds daily data between scoring visits, so you can see which cows need a closer look. It works alongside the vet and foot trimmer, and it replaces neither.
What the research shows
This summer the University of Liverpool published a randomised trial of CattleEye in the Journal of Dairy Science. Professor George Oikonomou, Professor of Cattle Health and Welfare at Liverpool, whose team ran the trial, talked through the results on the recent Dairy Health Blackbelt podcast.
For the study, cows on one large UK farm were split into two groups. One stayed on the farm’s existing lameness programme. The other got the same programme with CattleEye scores added.
In a randomised trial, severe lameness was 2% in monitored cows against 8% under standard practice.
“That was, for me, very encouraging, showing that the system can really help even on a farm that is already trying to manage lameness and is doing all the things that we want them to do,” Professor Oikonomou said.
He puts that down to the daily scores. “That’s probably because it makes it more proactive. You have these daily scores.”
The study also found that:
chronic lameness occurred less than half as often under daily monitoring.
at the mid-lactation check, nearly twice as many monitored cows had completely healthy feet.
caught early means more trims, not fewer.
“The farm after that trial decided to keep using it,” he said.
A tool, not a replacement
Jack McMaster is clear that the camera doesn’t do the farming for him.
“If the Wi-Fi drops out or we have a power cut someday, we still have to understand the basics of animal agriculture. But these new technologies are great aids in improving our lives and the cows’ lives,” he says.
Lameness costs around £330 per case, and CattleEye’s constant, consistent mobility can help farmers offset those costs, improve welfare and boost margins.
Find out if your farm is ready for a CattleEye Starter Kit - https://cattleeye.com/en-gb/buy
George and Jack McMaster spoke to BBC Farm Week. Professor George Oikonomou spoke to The Dairy Health BlackBelt podcast.
