As extreme heat gripped much of the world in summer 2023, many people struggled to stay cool. They weren’t the only ones: Using electricity-gobbling giant barn fans and misting machines that sucked thousands of gallons of water, farmers did all they could to keep their dairy cows from overheating, which not only stresses the cows, but also leads to reduced milk production.
As a smarter and less expensive alternative, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is using an innovative electrical device called an eTag to monitor the temperature of individual cows in real time to gain a better understanding of their behavior under stress. They hope to scale up to a smart system that can automatically identify heat-stressed animals and deploy cooling measures. They presented their research in October 2023 during the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, which also published their work in its proceedings.