Cow herding from the couch
Imagine if you could go on holiday and shift your herd in Southland from wherever you were?
The idea went down so well in Silicon Valley that a New Zealand company was able to bring home $8 million from venture capitalists Data Collective to develop it.
The result is a solar-powered electronic collar called Halter, designed by a company with the same name, that lets farmers manage and shift cows remotely.
It’s the brainchild of Rocket Lab alumnus Craig Piggott, who grew up on a dairy farm in Waikato.
Rocket Lab has strong Southland connections thanks to its founder Peter Beck, who grew up in Invercargill. After using his mechanical engineering skills to build spacecraft, Piggot turned his attention to cows.
Halter uses machine learning to do two things: monitor health and reinforce behaviour patterns.
It uses sound and vibrations to create virtual paddocks and guide cows to where they need to be.
‘‘The sound helps her [the cow] understand where she can’t go and the vibration helps her understand where she can,’’ marketing executive Kirby Wotherspoon said.
The sound and vibration can be controlled from a mobile application that also allows farmers to schedule moves and set virtual boundaries.
The ease with which Halter allows farmers to move herds encourages sustainable farming practices, Wotherspoon said.
The company was started in 2016 and received its funding in mid-2018.
Since then, it has grown to have a staff of 50, Wotherspoon said, noting that they include farmers and engineers.
The product and improvements have been tested on Halter’s pilot farm in Waikato for the past three years, she said.
Like other electronic collars, Halter also monitors the health and wellbeing of cows. It collects data on a cow’s normal behaviour and compares it with present readings to monitor an animal’s health.
This information is sent to the app, which can then alert farmers when a cow is unwell or, for the purposes of breeding, in heat.
The collars aren’t widely available yet but Halter showed them to farmers at Southern Field Days to introduce the idea to farmers, Wotherspoon said.
While the company wants to ‘‘get dairy right first’’, the application possibilities were endless, she said.