GEA UK today announced that it will be officially launching the CattleEye Camera Locomotion Scoring system at this year’s DairyTech event on the 7th Feb.
The Artificial Intelligence technology which is now being used to monitor over 100K cows worldwide has been proven to reduce lameness levels on dairies by providing an early indication of cow lameness. Figures from the AHDB show that a reduction of 10% in lameness prevalence can result in an additional £100 per cow per year added to the bottom line of a dairy farm.
CattleEye’s effectiveness on farms has been scientifically proven, an ongoing randomised controlled trial conducted by the University of Liverpool on a large English dairy demonstrated that using CattleEye to select cows for trimming eliminated score 3 cows in the treatment group (compared to a 6.7% incidence of score 3 cows in the control group; CattleEye was not used on the cows in the control group). Moreover, the proportion of chronic lameness cases (MS ≥ 2 at two consecutive sessions) in the control group was more than double the proportion of chronic lameness in the treatment group.
Uptake of the technology is being encouraged by UK retailers who are keen to increase animal welfare on dairies while at the same time helping farmer profits and reducing carbon emissions.
Rosie Cowie Dairy Agricultural Manager at Sainsburys said that “We at Sainsburys and the Sainsbury’s Dairy Development Group are keen to support our farmers in adopting new technology which focus on early lameness detection. CattleEye has been trialled and received a positive response on a number of our dairies”.
Thomas Atkins Dairy Agricultural manager at Tesco added “We have been working with CattleEye since its inception in 2019 and are delighted to see the positive effect it is having on Dairy farms.”
To use the system a low cost security camera is mounted over the exit race of a milking barn and connected to the Internet. Artificial intelligence algorithms in the cloud will then start learning how to uniquely identify and monitor the cows in the herd.
Dairy farmers are invited to come either to CattleEye stand B210 or to the GEA stand B40 to find out more and as a special show deal, producers who sign up for the product will be given a 3 month free trial of the Body Scoring Condition system which is due for commercial release later this year.
