The spy who tweeted me

The ‘spy cow’, known as ‘Agent_186’ on Twitter, says she will report progress on her Waikato farm using technology and sensors that record everything she does in a day. “Agent 186 reporting in, ready to relay important news,” was her first tweet.

Since then, she has declared her body condition score, posted a ‘selfie’ photograph from the shed, made a cow joke and counted the steps she took in a day. “The shiny blue pedometer around my neck says I took 4749 steps yesterday. Not a bad effort; maybe one day I’ll reach 10,000.”

The crossbred cow is one of 338 on the LIC 104ha dairy farm at Rukuhia. There the co-op researches, tests and develops new technologies, products and services. Each cow in the herd has recently been fitted with non-invasive sensors as part of a trial to record behaviour during mating.

Agent_186 is sending data via a lightweight pedometer around her neck, a rumen bolus in one of her stomachs to measure core temperature, and information from the farm’s technology including a weather station, inline milk meters, herd and pasture management software, and an in-shed automation system with automatic cow identification, drafting and a heat detection camera.

Depending on the day, and her mood Agent_186 may tweet about how much she moves and how far she walks, how hot she is and her body temperature, what the weather is like, whether she’s on heat and going up for mating, where her paddock is, and what the pasture cover is like, and how much milk she’s producing.

Tweets are automated as data is collected, although she got help with the selfie, says LIC senior scientist Kathryn Hempstalk, who set up the program and Twitter profile as a bit of fun, and so the information could be shared with farmers worldwide.

“We have heaps of sensors on the farm now, and it’s fascinating how much information we can get from a cow and the farm that can assist with daily management and decision making.

“The technology available these days opens up a whole new world for farmers and the information they can collect from their land and their cows, but it can be expensive so we decided to share our information with them and we thought a tweeting cow would generate some interest.”

As for cow number 186, Hempstalk says she (the cow) is none the wiser, other than being aware of the equipment and perhaps special attention onfarm.

“We asked the farm staff to choose a cow for the job and they came back with number 186 who is the top cow in the herd.”