What it is, what it isn’t, and what we’re asking.

Yes, she feels it: a vibration, from a unit worn on the outside. You can hold one against your own forearm and feel it for yourself; in the clip the founder does just that, and you can hear the pattern change as it starts up. Nothing is implanted, injected or ingested.

Rest and rumination come first, so the farm and its vet decide how often she is prompted. Begin with 1 prompt a day and watch the test cows and their penmates at that time. Whether there is room for a second is a decision for the next cycle, on the next cow.

A wearable neurostimulation device, worn on the outside for about 3 weeks after calving. It is neither a medicine nor a feed additive, so there is no withdrawal period and no residue. It sits alongside treatment, never in its place, and it does not hide clinical signs.

It prompts her to get up. Once she is on her feet she goes to the feed barrier, and her intake rises; any easing of her Negative Energy Balance (NEB) comes from what she eats. Each farm’s units are programmed to its own milking schedule, and can follow different schedules within one herd.

Alongside every one of them.

The device acts on what the cow does. The pedometers, collars, boluses, parlour meters and herd software already on the farm are what record the change, and the more of them a farm runs, the more of its own data shows the result, and the better the prompting can be fitted to the herd and its milking times.

“Approximately 3 in 5 dairy farmers utilised automated cow monitoring technology.” Barraclough 2020 · UK

By commercial observation, over more than a decade, on 6 conventional and organic US commercial dairies. Every cow carrying a device was set against at least one control cow picked to match her, matched as closely as possible, so the device was the main difference between them.

Behaviour first: more visits to the feed barrier. Then measured Milk, from a +10% floor to a +16% ceiling in test cows over control cows. That is commercial observation, not peer-reviewed.

A percentage increase is anecdotal until scientific studies verify the correlation and the causation.

When the feed itself was the problem. The cows carrying devices were eating more of it, so they showed it first, and that helped the farm find the fault and put it right.

More than 150 published sources, each read in full and kept on file. They are ranked by where the work was done (UK and EU first, then the US, then the rest of the world) and by relevance to cow Health, Milk Production, Reproduction and Emissions. The library is refreshed every quarter, after AHDB’s quarterly review and Defra’s milk price notice.

2nd- and 3rd-lactation fresh cows first. Other uses, in the clip, are the herd manager’s and dairy owner’s own accounts from the farms that used it; formal studies on those come next.

leave her in the barn, in her normal pen. They don’t have to find a new pecking group in the feed trough

Jeremy Setters, Herd Manager · FAQ 10 · his account, as he gave it

Development in the US paused when the pandemic hit and demand for US dairy fell to its lowest. Britain and Europe stood out for the restart: the animal comes first here, and so does the quality of what the dairy produces. Herd Health is now treated as an Emissions question, and the aim is lower Emissions per litre. The funding and regulatory environment backs this kind of work, and British farms already run the recording kit that shows the change.

Mostert 2018 · Netherlands · von Soosten et al. 2020 · Germany · Kyriazakis et al. 2024 · UK-led review

First, what the farm sees: each green-sleeve cow against her matched penmates. Then what its kit already records: her Behaviour first, then Health events in the first 30 days, Body Condition, Milk to Peak, and Fertility by day 90 on the first cycle of cows, all against matched controls in the same herd. After that, peer-reviewed studies designed with vets and universities, built on what those cows show. Whether the farm shares its data is the farm’s decision.