Building an IoT Framework for Connected Dairy

Heat stress (HS) causes cows to produce less milk with the same nutritional input, which effectively increases farmers' production costs. The economic toll due to higher-temperature, heat stress is a $1 billion annual problems. Not only in the United States, but also around the globe heat stress causes an adverse impact on dairy productivity. The opportunities, however, for the dairy industry is to electronically monitor cattle temperature and implement appropriate measures so that the impact of HS can be minimized. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates nearly $2.4 billion a year in losses from animal illnesses that lead to death can be prevented by electronically checking on cattle's' vital signs. This research paper recommends the most innovative electronic monitor framework, the 'Smart Connected Objects", aka, 'the Internet of Things (IoT)', that enables dairies to minimize the economic impact of HS and, at the same, capture the higher Return on Assets (ROA) & Return on Investment (ROI) by improving operational efficiencies. Happy Cow, more importantly, means happier, more profitable, dairy industry and richer and creamer dairy products. The proposed framework supports both offline and online dairy IoT. This paper presents a prototyping solution design as well as its application and certain experimental results.