Tuesday, 20 October 2020

Tracking the Health of a Goat Herd with RFID

As a goat farmer, Cory Spencer had a problem - most technology for dairy farmers in North America is designed for cows, not goats. This meant that what was commercially available was either unusable for his needs, or cost-prohibitive.

Goats
Image credit: Haltwhistle Cheese

So, as any good SparkFun customer would do, Cory decided to build something to fit his needs.

“I’m developing an RFID-based feeder that will dispense a predefined amount of grain to each goat at various points during the day,” Cory said. “There will be a stall set up that the goats can voluntarily enter, at which point an RFID reader will scan a unique RFID tag associated with each goat, and a Raspberry Pi will check to determine if the goat is eligible to have grain dispensed. If so, an auger attached to a motor will be activated, dispensing a preset amount of grain.”

But his inventiveness doesn't stop there. Cory plans to expand his creation in to a herd health monitor. Learn more about his project and plans for the future:

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