Murdoch Rutherford from Ferntech with its barking drone.
Murdoch Rutherford from Ferntech with its barking drone.
One company changed tack from sheep to dairy cows as part of its innovation journey.
Dunedin's Iris Data Science took part in the Sprout Accelerator Programme several years ago, developing a facial recognition system for sheep, in order to prevent rustling and monitor animal behaviour.
"We thought the market wouldcome," said managing director, Greg Peyroux. "But Sprout taught us to look for painkillers rather than vitamins."
So during last year's lockdown he made a lot of phone calls to find other areas where machine learning might find a use.
So the company developed its OmniEye locomotion scoring system which uses a CCTV camera mounted on a post near the exit race from a milking shed. It assigns each member of the herd a locomotion score from 0 to 3, ranking lameness with 3 meaning it needs to be drafted for treatment immediately. So farmers will receive an alert to that effect at the very next milking.
Four vets and two lameness experts, including Neil Chesterton, who is well-known in this field, ranked cows in order to build the deep knowledge required for the machine learning required. So now the images from the camera are sent to the Cloud to be transformed into 3D. By recording 27,000 data points for each animal as well as referring to a video file, algorithms are built up so comparisons can be made with cows moving normally.
Greg Peyroux, the managing director of Iris Data Science with the OmniEye camera for measuring lameness in cows.
It's estimated lameness could cost some farmers $50,000 as lame cows' milk may need to be withheld while they're treated and they may be culled from the herd at an early age.
The technology has been trialled on six farms already with the call going out at Fieldays for a further 50 farmers with rotary milking sheds and a good internet connection to take it to the next stage. "We want farmers to co-design our next tranche of models with us," said Greg, who co-founded the company with lead data scientist, Benoit Auvray. Overseas countries are already interested as well as goat farmers and horse owners locally.
Plans are under way to release different adaptations to record cows' body condition scores within the next six to nine months. And the company is also working on developing deep learning pasture quality prediction software. It's also joined with AgriGanics to create an artificial intelligence (AI) system to optimise soil health.
Drones have put to a new purpose by Auckland-based company, Ferntech, with its barking drone on display. It can fly for almost 30 minutes on one charge, and be used up to eight kilometres away from the operator. It comes complete with a high-resolution thermal camera to make finding stock easy and its speaker can emit a recording of a dog barking to move them rapidly to where the farmer wants.
Up to 500 are already in operation around the country on small and larger farms with Ferntech developing more uses more the machines supplied to it by Chinese company, DJI. It also markets field mapping or surveying drones equipped with a multispectral imaging array made up of six cameras to collect data which can be used to identify weeds or crop diseases as well as before and after information on crop treatments.
Spraying drones which have payloads of up to 30 kilograms and a spray width of up to nine metres are able to spray chemicals evenly and accurately. Not only is there less wastage, they are operated over land that would be challenging for large machinery to access.
Two animal welfare-oriented devices were on show in the Innovation Hub.
Numnuts is a tail docking and castration device for lambs, marketed by Timaru company, Agilis. Developed in Ireland and tested in Australia the tool allows the operator to apply Elastrator rings over the animal's tail and scrotum together with an injection of local anaesthetic.
Also on show was the soletech de-horner, developed by Massey University final year vet student, David Sole. It will be on the market next year promising faster, easier and more gentle dehorning of calves with less physical labour for vets.
He's also developed the soletech fetotomizer, a gentler way to remove calves which have died in utero from their mothers.
