Herditt

The Need

Around 600 million cattle are grazing today in South America, Africa, New Zealand and Australia and the US with most of the meat consumed worldwide arriving from these vast grazing fields.

The global cattle breeding industry suffers from a lack of advanced technological means, to fully allow for physical, sanitary, health related, physiological and safety monitoring of these animals. In fact, to this day, this industry operates without any proper tools for monitoring dangerous situations. As a result - about 50% of all calves do not survive beyond infancy, meaning, in the bottom line, that cattle produce a calf once every two years, instead of once a year.

The major loss of productivity due to this fact is estimated at an astounding sum of thousands of dollars per cattle (calculating the loss of offspring, which would also produce additional offspring down the line), along with an inability to ensure the safety and health of animals, especially in very large herds, grazing without interruption over huge natural areas.

The Solution

While improving the well-being and health of the herd, the Herd-itt platform will allow breeders to increase their productivity by a 25% growth in the number of calves, and at the same time save 30% on management costs, thanks to an integrated drone, which responds autonomously to theft attempts, predator attacks, detection of diseases, epidemics, allows finding exact birth locations and more.

In addition to the collar, which allows automatic herd counting and health status check every 10 minutes, the autonomous integrated drone saves major expenses on manpower and SUVs or horses, which are traditionally required for herd management, allowing the platform to save 30% on related expenses. Today, with Herd-itt’s tech, farmers can simply manage their herd via smartphone, easily and conveniently, at any time, from anywhere in the world.

Herd-itt’s platform is also raising great interest and demand among nature reserves, organizations and activists involved in the conservation and rescue of rare wildlife, especially those on the verge of extinction, as a tool to protect animals from illegal hunting, disease monitoring, starvation prevention and more. These projects will be carried out as part of the company's non-profit philanthropic activities, as a contribution to the community.


                              Saving endangered wildlife as contribution to the community.

Technology

Herd-itt has developed an electronic “smart” collar in IoT (Internet of Things) technology, linked to a cloud platform, including many sensors and powered by artificial intelligence based software with machine learning capabilities.

The collar can identify the location of the cattle, and warn in situations of distress, attempted theft or predator attacks, attempts to remove the collar and many other situations, while monitoring the animal's behavior, physical activity, as well as conditions related to mating, pregnancy, birth and more.


  
This extensive data, including a count of the herd every 10 minutes, is transferred from the collars to a cloud database, where further processing and analysis of all data is performed, and then presented to the farmer on the smartphone app, including up-to-date information on each cattle's physiological condition. In the event of illness, disappearance or any danger to the cattle, a real-time signal is sent to the mobile phone, and farmers can launch the Herd-itt drone with a single click, to fly autonomously to the location of the incident, and obtain a real-time image of what’s happening in the field.

    
The collar transmits the various data and GPS location to the cloud using the LORA communication system, directly to a reception pole, or via direct communication to satellites, and from there to the cloud platform.

  

The many advantages of using Herd-itt’s tech include:

• The collar, including its sensors system, machine learning and geo-location components, is capable of operating an entire year in the field without battery replacement, a huge and game-changing advantage for herd managers. The various elements that make up the company's IP, including machine learning models of animal behavior, along with an algorithm designed to manage the power used by the collar for such a long period of time, are all exclusive - Herd-itt is the only company in the world that can offer a collar with such capabilities.
• The platform is able to collect real-time information from almost any location on earth, thanks to a communication system that connects the collars to the cloud via the LORA infrastructure, developed by Cisco specifically for IoT agricultural use, along with collaborations with 3 satellite-communications companies.
• Using an autonomous drone as a “Flying cattle boy” integrated into the system, allows the farmer to get a real-time picture of the herd following any sign of distress. In South Africa, users of Herd-itt’s tech have created a complete control center, monitoring all herds from a single room, giving a real-time image of the condition of all cattles, including drone images at the farmer’s request.