First synergies in the area of data networking and data input are already making themselves felt. The digitalisation project D4Dairy, launched a year ago in October 2018 with more than 40 partners from industry and science, is already showing initial results in the area of data networking. With the development of new technologies, a large amount of new data is created, from which patterns can be recognized and alarms for heat, diseases or information on activities or rumination can be provided. However, the potential of these technologies can only be exploited if the data can be networked accordingly. The high-tech company smaXtec from Graz has been dealing with measurement data directly from the rumen of the cow for several years. Data such as body temperature and movement activity are measured via a bolus, which is deposited there, and from this data important information for the early detection of diseases such as mastitis is made available for herd management. In addition to health monitoring, smaXtec also detects heat and calving in good time.
An interface between smaXtec and the Rinderdatenverbund RDV has just been successfully set up. Thus already existing data of the farms do not have to be entered again by the farmers. The networking can also be expected to make alarms more accurate and to generate correspondingly improved evaluations for herd management (e.g. in the LKV herd manager) and valuable parameters for the genetic improvement of animal health. The D4Dairy consortium is researching these issues. Mario Fallast, co-founder of smaXtec: "The simple, efficient and effective use of data for dairy farms is a major concern of our company. Our customers should spend as little time as possible on using our monitoring system. That's why we also sought this cooperation through the D4Dairy project in order to create the greatest possible added value for our customers by combining data".
The Styrian company smaXtec was founded in 2009. Meanwhile more than 60,000 sensors have been marketed in more than 25 countries. The company currently employs 40 people at its headquarters in Graz. Other technology providers that are part of the D4Dairy consortium are the SenseHub systems from SCR by Allflex and METOS by Pessl Instruments (housing climate sensors).
Data exchange with the milking robot suppliers Lely, Delaval and GEA, which are cooperation partners of D4Dairy, is in prospect as well.

Rumenboli serve to record valuable information such as temperature, activity and pH value directly in the rumen.
Photo: Michael Fiedler Photography