From electronic identification to health management
2004
Klindtworth, M.(Fachhochschule Osnabrueck, Osnabrueck (Germany). Fakultaet Agrarwissenschaften u. Landschaftsarchitektur)
The use of electronic identification (EID) in cattle husbandry is gaining significance due to the enormous structural change in agriculture and the related rationalisation and automation. Electronic identification can be expected to become established as a basic technology for automated allocation of sensor data to the individual animal. As microelectronic components and their mass application continue to develop, sensors are increasingly becoming available in agriculture. This will lead to a cheaper measurement of direct and indirect health parameters such as: body temperature, animal activity, animal weight, milk yield, conductivity of milk, intake of concentrate and roughage, behavioural aspects, etc. Biological processes are highly complex in most cases and they are influenced by external interactions. As a consequence, sensor-based data should not be interpreted as a single parameter, but need to be seen in a broader context. In order to derive any decision, specialist and expert knowledge is required to calculate and to analyse the available data from different sensors in an adequate way. Further hardware and software developments will not merely be oriented to recording the status quo as precisely as possible. It is rather expected that predicting information systems will be developed. Neural nets, fuzzy logic and data mining systems provide initial approaches. The increasing availability and the use of the Internet in agriculture support new methods, so that the recording and processing of individual sensor data no longer takes place in a decentralised manner, on individual farms, but remotely, as a shared central data management platform, with defined access for the farmer (and other user groups such as consultants or veterinarians). It remains to be seen whether this technique can be established in future.
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