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In 10: How we're rethinking cow wellbeing with wearables · Talking Dairy

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Kiora and welcome to Talking Dairy in 10.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Jack McGowan from DairyNZ.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're talking about something that's changing the way we understand and care for our cows, wearable technology.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: In episode 113, we talked about how animal-based measures help us understand cow wellbeing.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you missed that one, it's worth a listen and it sets the scene for this episode.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're taking it a step further.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: As these technologies become more common on farm, they're giving us access to more data than ever before.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Within DaiNZ's enhanced animal care program, wearables are helping us monitor things we used to only measure with a thermometer or a clipboard.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So what does this shift mean for the future of animal research and how can it inform animal care practices on farm?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Joining us is Dr.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Stacy Hendrix to explain more.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Tunakwe, Stacy, and welcome back.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone who hasn't listened to episode 113 yet, can you tell us a little about who you are?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Jack, for that intro.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I am Stacy Hendrix and I am an animal scientist working for Dairy and Z, mostly in either animal science-related areas, but also applying my skills across a few different areas like agronomy or farm system research, especially when it comes to the likes of wearables, because we are using them more and more across our research areas.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so because I have a bit of a background in the use of wearables, I actually started a PhD back in 2017 and used wearables in my PhD.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time they were really only research-based tools, and so they weren't really being used widely commercially on farms.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, that's kind of given me an early introduction to wearables.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout my PhD, I was able to learn how to analyse some of the large data sets that we generate from wearable devices.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really like meant that I've had a lot of involvement in that space since I've joined DairyNZ.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And how are wearables changing the way we measure and understand cow well-being?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So wearables are providing us with new ways to capture animal-based measures of cow well-being.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go back to episode 113, we talked a little bit about what animal-based measures are and the different types of measures that are available.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, just to summarize, they tell us something about how a cow is functioning or experiencing their environment.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So some examples that farmers often use are things like body condition score and live weight that can indicate an animal's health or if a cow's being sufficiently fed.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we use some of these measures among others in research.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And traditionally, if we wanted to understand something like how a cow was coping with heat, we'd use tools like thermometers or we'd rely on visual observations, like we'd go and watch for signs of panting, which is a well-known sign of heat stress in cows.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, if we wanted to understand something like how much time cows are spending lying or ruminating, we'd literally have someone out in the paddock with a clipboard recording behaviors every few minutes.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: So as you can imagine, you know, these are very time-intensive ways to measure or monitor animal behaviour.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And because of these approaches, they did have their limitations in a research context.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd often only capture data for a single point in time or very limited points in time.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you wanted to understand what was happening across, you know, an entire week, you would need so much resource to have someone standing out in a paddock 24-7 to capture that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what that actually meant was that traditionally we would easily miss what was happening in key moments.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you have a hot afternoon and you wouldn't capture necessarily how behaviour changes in response to that.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we often weren't collecting the data when cows were experiencing these changes, and that's made it a little bit more difficult to fully understand how these different conditions affect them, especially in grazing systems where the environment's always changing.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it sounds like those traditional methods have taught us a lot about cow health and behaviour, but they do have their limits.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, how are wearables building on those approaches and helping us to understand more?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, with technologies like rumen boluses and wearables that collect things like rumination time and lying time, and with rumen boluses, of course, we can capture things like room and temperature.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It allows us now to continuously collect animal-based measures that we would have traditionally had to have manually observed or collected.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of a few observations over an hour, for example, or over a couple of days of our experiment, we can actually track how each cow is behaving and responding across the whole day and even across seasons.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this continuous real-time data that's giving us a much richer picture of what a cow's experiencing.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this really helps us to better understand how specific like weather conditions or management changes affect their well-being.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's allowing us to actually understand the conditions that we would expect animals might experience things like heat stress.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we can actually provide farmers with more detailed information about what are the weather conditions where we would expect animals to start responding.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can actually understand cow well-being at a level that we just haven't been able to previously.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like it really brings the cow's perspective to life in a way that we haven't been able to before.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Can you share a few examples of how wearables are being used in research right now and what kind of insights they're helping us to uncover?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got a few different projects underway within the Enhanced Animal Care program, and one example is our work on heat stress.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we've already done some work using room and boluses to get a better understanding of when and under what conditions cows experience heat stress.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So using boluses, we're able to record room and temperature, which we can then use that as a proxy for core body temperature.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we would expect under hot conditions, core body temperature will increase, especially when a cow isn't coping with that temperature increase and they can't regulate their body temperature.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're able to use room and temperature as a proxy for core temperature, and then combining that with data from wearables like rumination time and lying behavior, we can actually start to then link how a cow's behaviour changes when she starts to feel a bit too hot.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that gives us some practical insights into what farmers can look for on farm if they're using wearables.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So then farmers that maybe don't have access to boluses with room and temperature might be able to look for weather conditions in combination with rumination and lying behaviour that might indicate a cow is feeling a little bit uncomfortable because of hot weather.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So taking this work a step further, Dr.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Charlotte Reed is actually leading research this summer.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so she's using a range of different rumen boluses and wearable devices to understand how cows respond under different mitigation strategies.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll be providing shade, but also access to sprinklers on the yard at milking, and then trying to understand how rumen temperature and behavior change when cows have access to those options.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that helps us better understand the benefits of these strategies alongside using more traditional data like milk production, so we can start to also capture what the productivity impacts of these different mitigation strategies are.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And looking ahead, what could all this data mean for the future?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, could things like AI or big data analytics help us get even better at supporting cow well-being?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So all this data opens up some really exciting possibilities for the future research of DairyNZ.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're continuing to gather more continuous information from wearables and then using that information, you know, we're transforming our research from having a couple hundred data points to literally millions of rows of data.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's astronomical the amount of data that can be captured now.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so because of that, you can apply more advanced analytics to look for patterns in your data that maybe are happening less frequently and would be quite difficult to capture if you're only collecting a couple of data points.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're sort of exploring within the Enhanced Animal Care program, where we're looking at if we combine different data streams from wearables and bolus data together, can that give us a more holistic picture of how cows are experiencing their environment?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So trying to basically provide a proof of concept showing how this technology could be used to capture a new animal-based measure of animal well-being that's tailored specifically to our pasture-based systems.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So ultimately, having more of these data digital streams will help us to build a deeper understanding of cow experience and help us to develop new ways of measuring animal well-being.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Stacy.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that brings us to the end of today's episode.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about how wearables and other technologies are helping us understand cow well-being in a whole new way from monitoring lying, grazing, and rumination to tracking rumen temperatures and behavior during heat stress.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the key takeaway is that by combining traditional animal-based measures with continuous real-time data, we can build a much richer picture of how these cows are experiencing their environment.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And these tools are helping us improve our research and also give farmers actionable insights to support cow comfort and well-being every day.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you'd like to know more, as we mentioned, check out episode 113 or the research story that's in the Inside Dairy November-January 2026 edition.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find that on pages 18 and 19.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll also link to some information in the show notes.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Talking Dairy and 10, Matewa.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to get connected with DairyNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdai at dairynz.co.nz.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.