The Background
For hundreds of years, pastoral farming has been a crucial part of society and agriculture, but has remained mostly unchanged over the years. ViehFinder’s Raphael Krebs, Peter Lederer, and Jacob Krebs sought to revolutionize cattle management on high altitude alpine pastures.
The alpine pastures are the ideal recreation area for cattle and give the young cattle the necessary time for development in the fresh mountain air as well as increases resistance against possible diseases.
Every summer in the European Alps around 500,000 head of cattle, countless sheep, goats, and other livestock graze in high alpine pastures. The management of these alpine pastures is fulfilling but often also very demanding and time-consuming!
ViehFinder solves this problem with a complete animal tracking solution to save farmers time, resources, and money.
ViehFinder is a system for monitoring grazing livestock that works reliably even in high alpine regions and with poor mobile reception.
The Challenge
ViehFinder found that alpine pastures were stuck in the past — antiquated processes meant a high utilization of resources and time to perform basic tasks. By bringing this industry into the modern age, the following challenges could be tackled.
The work on a mountain pasture can be idyllic, but the reality is often different. ViehFinder realized how much of a need there was for data-driven pasture management and took on the various challenges at hand.
Time-Consuming Herd Location
Locating cattle on the mountain pasture is often time-consuming, tedious, and difficult. It is simply not efficient to spend countless hours finding a herd, let alone an individual animal.
Antiquated Herd Management
Without frequent and updated data on a herd’s behavior, such as their preferred grazing areas, distance traveled, and herd size, managing a herd becomes less informed and less efficient.
High Operational Costs
Fencing and alternative physical management options are costly and impractical when considering pastures that are tens — if not hundreds — of hectares.
The Solution
ViehFinder developed an IoT-enabled position tracker neckband for pasture animals to support herd management, even in the harshest and most remote environments.
Use of LoRa Technology
LoRa© technology, optimized for long ranges with low energy consumption, allows ViehFinder to transmit location and other sensor data efficiently.
Sustainable Energy Solution
By using a small solar panel and a rechargeable battery for rainy days, ViehFinder devices reduce environmentally harmful battery replacements or other tedious maintenance activities.
Robust IoT Capability
By using TagoIO, ViehFinder is able to offer its customers best-in-class data integration, visualization, interaction, and data analysis features from an easy to use platform interface.
