A Saskatchewan based company is getting ready to launch a pilot program testing data gathered through a new type of cattle ear tag.
Ori Cattle Tags is based in Edam in the northwest part of the province, but the tags are made outside of Canada in Mexico.
It has contracted A.I. experts to develop the tags containing so-called "Emotional AI" technology that will be smart enough to predict a calving time within a relatively short window.
"What that is, is just general behavioural patterns. So that's like your movements and temperaments and fertility patterns and any kind of behavioural changes that are in your cattle." said James Babcock with Ori Cattle on what "Emotional AI" does through biometrics such as heart rate, pulse, and movement.
"The biometrics are read in the tag, and then that tag inputs it to the AI, and the AI reads it, and it'll get a baseline. It'll know when the cow is calm and when it's excited, when it's angry, when it's upset or scared, and then the AI will recognize that, and it'll put it into patterns, and then it'll give you an outprint on what the cattle is feeling."
Babcock says anyone interested in participating need to have at least 10 cattle or more.
"We prefer as many cattle as you can get. That way, we can refine our system to the best quality, and then farmers can also help and shape the system so they can tell us what they like, what they don't like, what's working, what's not working, so they can help refine and build the system themselves so they feel like it's been built exactly for them."
The pilot project will provide the first true test as it's been previously tested on humans, he said.
"Cattle is probably our best way to train our AI, because cattle doesn't lie to where humans do. They'll push off pain, or they'll lie about something, or they'll take off their bracelet, whereas cattle, we get a baseline of emotion, and any kind of feedback is just constant from the cattle compared to a human."
The cost of the tags for producers who are involved in the pilot is 35 dollars, then up to 68 dollars once the tags are available to the public, Babcock said.
"And there's no subscription fees to anything that we provide, so unlike the competition that charge subscription fees, we charge no subscription fees whatsoever." he said, adding participants will get a deal of 35 dollars per tag even after the pilot is complete.
"So say you get 100 or so tags and then you get 500 more cattle, you can buy 500 more tags at that set rate of 35 dollars instead of 68 dollars."
While there's no subscription cost, there will be a secondary revenue source called Wildcoin credit, a digital token based off of real world value.
What this will do is it'll track your cows, how they're being treated, how they eat, how they're managed, their walking, their moving, their movements. Everything will be tracked, and every time that is tracked, then it rewards you with this token." he explained. "And then that token can be used in exchange for money to bring down costs on your farm or pay for more tags or pay for upgrades or anything like that. It's just kind of a new generator of economy that we have started with the digital token. And it can also be exchanged for real-world money."
With any new technology, there is concern over security. Babcock reassures the information stays with the user and nothing goes to the cloud.
"All it's doing is training our AI. We don't get any location data; we don't see anybody's farm. Nobody else can see anybody's farm. Everything is 100% encrypted. Everything that we use is the same kind of technology that the military uses. So it's impossible to see anything on anybody's farm. So there's no worries about anybody hacking your device and seeing how many cattle you have or anything like that. It's 100% secure."
A feature of the tag is the option of including a local veterinarian getting notifications, so rather than calling the veterinarian, Babcock says they can be included in a hub and receive notifications of what a cow is doing.
One of the claims of these tags is it's lengthy battery life of three to four-and-a-half years. He said rather than constantly running, the tag would operate in "short bursts".
"So it's only sending data that needs to be sent." he said.
More information is oricattle.ca.
(With files from Neil Billinger, CJWW)
