Implementation and Evaluation on Three Commercial Dairy Farms of an IoT Monitoring System of the Barn Environment

Automated cow productivity, health, and welfare monitoring is critical due to growing herd sizes and automation on dairy farms. Even though automated monitoring techniques have advanced significantly, data collecting on the barn environment still needs to be improved. In actuality, one of the main worries of contemporary dairy production is the risk that heat stress poses to the wellbeing of the cows. As a result, a working prototype of an automated system that is open and modifiable and that combines information from several sensors related to the barn environment was created. Sensor data from temperature, humidity, wind speed, water use, temperature, and moisture content of the litter, as well as information on cow behaviour (such as feeding, ruminating, and laying) are all integrated by the system. The data from the sensors are sent first to a gateway and then to the cloud where are stored. They are then shown to the user on an internet-accessible dashboard continually and in real time. The system was implemented in three commercial farms where an area of a barn has been monitored. Considerable variation across the three farms has been found both for environment and climate, which indicates the importance of studying the effect of barn environment across many different commercial farms to improve animal welfare.