AI on Dairies is Coming in Hot

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 11:44:48 GMT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is permeating nearly every facet of society, and soon it will be a regular fixture on dairy farms, too, according to Miel Hostens, Robert and Anne Everett endowed associate professor of digital dairy management and data analytics at Cornell University.

On a recent episode of the “ Cornell Cow Convos ” podcast, Hostens says he currently considers AI to be in the exploratory stage.

“At this moment, I think we’re in a bit of a ‘hype cycle,’” he says. “We’re just starting to see some of the advantages that could potentially be applicable to the dairy industry.”

Hostens says there currently are very few AI-based technologies that are ready for commercial farms, but that will be changing quickly as companies strive to apply the technology to assist dairies in meaningful ways. Some of the potential applications he mentioned are parlor management, lameness/locomotion scoring, automated body condition scoring (BCS) and calving detection.

He says the origins of AI have been in place for decades but have been bolstered recently by cheaper and more robust computational power, coupled with natural language processing techniques and photography and video technology.

Some “baby steps” toward full-on AI have already be implemented on dairies, such as using basic statistics to program systems to signal alerts. But in that case, humans made the decisions and set the data thresholds, versus the machine learning that is the cornerstone of AI.

“Nowadays, with machine learning, you can throw a whole bunch of data at these algorithms, and the algorithms are able to find patterns themselves without humans being involved anymore,” he explains.

There will be questions and even ethical considerations along the way. For example, it’s one thing to capture and apply data on cows for BCS or locomotion scoring, but is it an invasion of privacy to analyze and apply human behavior in parlor management? Hostens says that is yet to be determined.

And who, exactly, owns the data?

“The ownership stays forever with the one who creates the data and that’s the farmer,” declares Hostens, who also is director of Cornell’s Bovi-Analytics Lab.

But, he adds, unlike a tractor or piece of land, it is possible for more than one entity to own data. In addition to the farm, it could be legally possible for the AI company to own a common set of data.

Just like a robotic milker or feed pusher, Hostens says it’s also important to have a plan in place for breakdowns. If the system is knocked offline or quits functioning for some reason, who will step in to take its place?

In preparation for the onset of AI, Hostens advises dairy managers to take the following steps to maximize it in their business:

Get your data ready – Think about the issues on your dairy that could be solvable through AI, and begin collecting data sets on them now that could potentially be plugged into an algorithm later.
Consider monetizing it -- Hostens says AI companies cannot train their algorithms and deliver services to dairies without the ground truth that happens on a dairy.
“If you are generating data for an AI company, you can ask for something in return,” he advises.

Hostens says AI will obviously not eliminate the need for people to care for animals on dairies, but it will shift employee needs in some ways. For example, fewer people might be needed to manually perform BCS or walk pens to monitor calving, but someone will need to regularly maintain the equipment that performs those tasks instead.

“Those systems will have to be running all the time,” he says. “What we tend to do is put those cameras high on the ceiling and hope that they will monitor forever. But you will need to have some kind of maintenance system around it.”

AI systems also still need to be developed to a point that they are generalizable across farms, Hostens says.

“But the promises are big, that’s for sure,” he adds.

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The Quest to Save a Rare Breed of Goats on the Verge of Extinction

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 18:44:13 GMT

We first gave you a glimpse of some exceptional kids last year during Harvest of Thanks .

These aren’t just any goat; these are Arapawa goats, one of the rarest breeds of goats in the world.

“It’s a phenomenal feeling to be able to work to maintain a breed that’s effectively endangered, said Tad Thompson, CEO and lead veterinarian at Reproduction Specialty Group Inc. (RSG) based in Lebanon, Ind.

The breed that was originally brought here by English settlers, is finding a new home once again in the Midwest.

Knowing the Arapawa breed was on the verge of extinction, Conner Prairie, which is a hands-on historical museum based in Fishers, Ind., teamed up with RSG with one goal: to save the breed.

“I’ve seen in the last 10years, we have gone from five goats here up to 35 goats now,” says Emily Nyman, livestock coordinator for Conner Prairie. “I’ve watched the breed go from just a couple active breeders across the country, to 25, 30 active breeders right now. And thinking about it and the future, it’s just really exciting to know that the work that we’re doing today is really going to influence where the breed goes in the future and hopefully for their success.”

Conner Prairie focuses on heritage breeds, which are older breeds with a historical significance. The story started last year when Conner Prairie partnered with RSG to artificially inseminate does from their herd.

“It was a phenomenal success,” Thompson says. “And so we were able to use the frozen semen genetics from the Smithsonian and partnered up with Conner Prairie.”

“We think we achieved a little over an 80%, pretty close to an 82%, conception rate on those goats,” he adds. “So, it was a phenomenal success. They were they were thrilled. The babies were born. Everything went quite well there.”

With Arapawa being a heritage breed, they didn’t have a lot data to pull from, but thanks to technology from RSG, the mission of reproducing this breed, was a grand success.

“Because of the success we had last year, Connor Prairie decided to move one step further into what’s called embryo transfer. And so it’s a multiple ovulation embryo transfer,” Thompson says. “Everything went as planned, and the technology was able to marry up with the need for maintaining the heritage breed, and we had great success.”

“We worked with RSG to inseminate another round of does using Smithsonian’s semen, and we were able to do an embryo transfer with some of the semen that we got from a buck that we used last year,” Nyman says.

The team was able to successfully collect seven embryos, five of which were put into does, and the other two were frozen and sent to the Smithsonian.

“They’ve been really lovely people to work with and have been really excited to have new genetics brought into their germplasm bank, but also for us to be able to use the semen in their collection,” Nyman says. “So we’re able to continue to work with the Arapawa breed and help with the genetic preservation.”

It’s that offspring that was then sent across the U.S. as a way to continue to grow the breed.

“From the seven does that we did embryo transfer on, six of them did settle, and we ended up having 10 kids,” Nyman says. “From those kids, we have sent bucks off to North Carolina, Missouri, Kansas and Washington State. So, we’ve helped spread genetics through breeders that we knew, who knew the importance of these bucks and knew how to help the breed within their own genetics and to spread those genetics then.”

Arapawa goats are dual purpose breed, which means they’re valuable for meat and milk. And the efforts from Conner Prairie and RSG are preserving the history of this useful breed while growing a new future.

“To take the today’s modern technology and partner with them and marry that back to maintaining and developing this heritage breed, is just phenomenal,” Thompson says. “As a kid growing up on the farm, you look down the path of life, and whether that’s school or careers or jobs, and you have big dreams and aspirations. There are some of the dreams that you don’t know you dream about until you experience it. And so, it’s kind of a dream come true to be able to help and maintain those type of those type of initiatives that are greater than we are.

Artificial Intelligence

AI on Dairies is Coming in Hot

The Quest to Save a Rare Breed of Goats on the Verge of Extinction