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Artificial intelligence detects early signs of lameness

Technology that pairs a video camera with artificial intelligence is helping farmers better manage hoof health and prevent lameness.

Tera Baker from NEDAP says lameness is hard to consistently identify early, but their new SmartSight camera can catch signs of hoof problems and lameness weeks before the naked eye can detect a problem, allowing the hoof trimmer to do more maintenance and less treatment.  “We’ve actually been cooking up this solution for several years now and building an algorythmn that pulls in millions of data points, assessing cows and creating locomotion scores so we believe our algorythmn is far superior to anything the industry has ever seen before as far as accurately identifying lameness.”

Baker says the camera is mounted above a space where the cows walk through. “The cows move freely beneath it and we are able to tie to an existing ID system on the farm, or you can put in NEDAP’s ID system, whichever you prefer to use, and we pair that with what the camera sees as far as the cow’s gate below the camera, and we send that to a brain box that is mounted on the farm.”

Baker says the brain box immediately creates a locomotion score.  After that, the video feed is discarded and the score is sent to the farmer’s secure cloud storage. “This is a tool that really allows the farmer to take control of hoof health on their farm. It puts the farmer in the driver’s seat and it gives the farmer an opportunity to now completely restrategize and rework their on farm protocols.”

Baker says catching lameness issues early means cows stay healthy and productive.  Baker says hoof trimmers have also found they are able to get more cows through the chute because they’re spending less time treating severe problems.

Baker spoke to Brownfield during World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.

AUDIO: Tera Baker with NEDAP discusses the SmartSight camera system with Brownfield’s Larry Lee during World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.