By Alice McFarlane

Sensor technologies for breeding and calving management

Apr 25, 2025 | 11:58 AM

For the last two years Dinesh Dadarwal been testing sensor technologies for breeding and calving management at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.

The idea is to put a collar around a bull’s neck to help detect when a cow or heifer is in heat.

Dadarwal said it is one way to address the labour shortage in Western Canada in the cattle industry.

“What we are trying to do is identify different sorts of equipment that are neck collars and trying to see whether we can implement them at breeding time,” Dadarwal said. “We put them around the neck of the bull and see if that can detect heat in beef cattle.”

There are some sensors that can be used both for artificial insemination and for natural breeding purposes. The research project is also examining a camera-based system that claims it can detect calving and send a message to producers.

Another championship

Mustangs win back-to-back SJHL Titles

53m ago

Election day

Local ridings up for grabs during federal election day

2h ago

Festival Attack

Ages of 11 victims at Vancouver festival range from 5 to 65: Police

19h ago

Dadarwal said it would be useful for the producers, but the existing systems have not been validated.

“We have already done a couple of experiments, and we have found some of them are working and some of them are not working. Right now, we are venturing into the aspect of actually using the images and the videos that we have gathered for the last two years and use them to build some algorithms.” he said.

Dardarwal said they are collaborating with the computer scientists trying to find any private companies who might be willing to take those algorithms and do the settings.

There are calving sensors which can be placed on the cow’s tail but those have disadvantages.

“We don’t want that because considering if a producer has 400 cows, then he has to put it on and take it off when the cow is done calving, it’s labour intensive,” he said. “We want to get away from that. We want to use the camera-based systems where you install the system that’s going to do the job for you.”

Dardarwal said this system hasn’t been tested. He added the companies that are out there right now are saying it can work.

“But we have not found that to be true so far.”

He said there was an experiment on about 200 animals last year. It will be repeated this year on about 300 cows and heifers.

“It seems like for the breeding side the sensor that we are using that goes around the neck of the bull is working, but we believe that it can do more than what company is selling so that’s what we want to test out this year,” he said.

Dadarwal added the collars have been staying on the bulls but there are occasional tag losses on the cows and heifers.

The research project is receiving assistance from the federal/provincial Agriculture Development Fund.

–

alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com