CowVid: Streamlining 3rd party remote monitoring of dairy farms to mitigate travel restrictions

This project will develop and pilot a cloud-based platform that gives inspection bodies access to automated body condition scoring and video information on individual animals, enabling a more thorough welfare inspection without the need for a farm visit. Because of lockdown measures, on-farm inspections can not be implemented and certification bodies such as Red Tractor have enacted some pilot remote inspections, which do not give the same level of animal welfare information as a physical inspection. In addition lockdown measures have caused a backlog of both inspections and training for new inspectors. This technology will augment existing virtual inspection protocols, help to reduce travel time for inspectors, thus helping to reduce the inspection backlog. Making the automated monitoring data available as part of online courses, enhances training modules and enables a greater part of the training to take place online, thus reducing the training backlog. Insurance companies report that the pandemic has created challenges in data gathering for risk management due to a greater degree of uncertainty and a lack of up-to-date information. The envisaged system gives insurance companies access to detailed farm data enabling a greater depth of information on the dairy industry that helps them manage risk during this period of unprecedented uncertainty.