Collar
or
Ear Tag
Heat + Health Monitoring for Dairy Cows
Built on the latest hardware and technology, our cow collar and ear tags combine cutting-edge cloud-based computing to deliver actionable insights for dairy farmers, whichever option you choose. Powerful algorithms continuously analyse multiple data inputs to deliver actionable insights right to a farmer’s pocket, anywhere and anytime.
Active Tag is a product from Tru-Test, a New Zealand home-grown success story known for its practical, reliable and robust quality solutions that help farmers make better informed decisions for their farming enterprise. With over 6 decades on the market, Tru-Test is trusted by farmers to stand the test of time.
No More Manual Tracking!
In an age where skilled labour is increasingly scarce, Active Tag is a 24/7 affordable herd care and alert solution. Instead of spending six or more weeks visually looking to identify cows in heat—a significant amount of time that most don’t have—Active Tag can detect heat, alert to health issues and monitor cow activity such as walking, lying, resting, ruminating and more.
Our cattle collars monitor more gestures (behaviours) than any other system – 23 in total!
Providing Actionable Insights for Dairy Farming
The data from Active Tags is always available to access. In the event of a power outage or if the internet goes down, our device stores all monitoring data for 10 days. Need information fast for making decisions before cows leave the parlour? The Tru-Test Active Tag Gateway has the fastest processing speeds of any gateway, the greatest read range and is the only gateway to operate at a full range of 360 degrees.
Providing actionable insights to aid in dairy farming is at the core of Tru-Test Active Tags. Helping to improve dairy farm operations, profitability and success is always the outcome we love to see.
What Comes with Active Tag?
Getting Started with Active Tag
Step 1:
Get In Touch
When an enquiry into Active Tags is made, contact with the farm will be made within 24–48 hours. This includes a brief conversation to set a consultation farm visit where the Tru-Test team will discuss farm goals & objectives.
We’ll talk about what the farm hopes to achieve with a dairy cow heat & health monitoring solution, and then discuss how Active Tag can be utilised efficiently to aid them towards that goal. After the consultation, a quote for the full product will be supplied.
Step 2:
Set Up Active Tag
Once the quote is accepted and signed, the next step is an installation session. This is when our team head to the farm to install the cow collars, the gateway and the Active Tag system. During this, we’ll educate the farm on how to put on each collar, how to pair them to each animal, how to operate the system and more.
When you’re all set up with Active Tag you can start playing! Use the dashboard, monitor your cows and get used to the system.
Step 3:
Get Going And Follow Up
Our Customer Success team will be in touch when the installation and education session is complete, ensuring that everything went smoothly. They’ll also be in-touch periodically to make sure the system is operating as intended, started during the first week of installation, again after 2 weeks, and frequently after that over the coming months.
Notice anything not working as intended in the system? Farmers have 24/7 access to Customer Support technicians who can help troubleshoot and solve problems that pop up.
Ready to upgrade your farm?
Heat Detection
Keep track of your cattle’s heat
Heat detection is the detection of estrus. On a dairy farm one of the most important measures (and driver of economics) is the 6-week in-calf rate (6WICR). The 6WICR, a key indicator of dairy herd reproductive performance, measures the percentage of cows in a herd that become pregnant within the first six weeks of the mating period.
A high 6WICR is crucial for maximising milk production and profitability, as it leads to earlier calving dates and a larger proportion of dairy cows in milk during the peak production period. Dairy production drives income on a dairy farm, so maintaining pregnant cows is key. The tighter the first to last calvings are, the easier the management is.
Active Tags provide real-time heat detection alerts alongside general health monitoring, showcasing all results in an in-depth graphical interface. The dashboard is a great tool for planning, predicting and keeping on-top of your cow’s complete heat and health status.
Track each
individual cow’s data
Active Tag uses multiple accelerometers to monitor more gestures than any other solution—23 in total! The data from the hardware is run through multiple advanced algorithms in our cloud-based software.
Keep track of which cows are in heat
After analysis of the data, we can say with very high sensitivity and specificity that a cow is in heat, showing signs of a developing health issue, or may even need immediate attention.
Get started with Active Tag
The complete heat and health monitoring solution
Health Monitoring
An ambulance at the top of the cliff, not the bottom.
Health issues are both emotionally and financially taxing. No farmer wants to see any cow unwell, sick or worse. Illness also impacts productivity, resulting in expensive treatments or even needing to remove a cow from the herd.
Early health issue detection enables a farmer to take proactive action to ensure the welfare and health of the cow, avoiding all these unwanted outcomes.
The Active Tag system alerts farmers to a decline in health status. It uses all prior recorded data points to plot a trajectory of falling health, which then alerts the farmer to check on the cow early before it is too late.
Compare daily activity for health trends
View health indexes for each cow to monitor any concerning trends that arise. Having the ability to see declining health trends means you can give urgent care when needed.
Diagnose key dates when health declines
This cow showed increased lying/resting times after she calved, noted by the blue baby carriage at the bottom. This could indicate a health decline due to calving.
Get started with Active Tag
The complete heat and health monitoring solution
Reproduction Reports
Keep on top of any reproductive issues
Reproduction is key to the ongoing success on any dairy farm. It’s the difference between profitability and debt. Being able to easily identify and address reproductive issues (e.g. irregular or silent heats) means the dairy farmer can take proactive action with these animals. Our system provides actionable reproduction information to help the farm act early.
Reproduction Issue Action List
If Active Tag has detected any reproduction flags, the reproduction issue action list will display a list of each cow alongside the detected issue to action.
Graphed reproduction alerts
Using Active Tag health monitoring, any reproduction alerts will be noted alongside the health graph so you can compare key health indexes to diagnose any trends.
Get started with Active Tag
The complete heat and health monitoring solution
Group Activity
Manage your livestock in personalised groups
Group Activity allows you to see the impact (positive or negative) for management changes across a user-defined group. Our system allows fully customisable groups as the system is always comparing the cow to herself and to her group peers.
This enables Active Tag to provide not just a comparative to the cow herself, but also to the group. This helps to enhance the robustness of the insights and detect even earlier trends that vary from the past and from the group.
Most dairy farms have a number of groups which are often based on either the lactation cycle or the number of lactations a cow has been through. Being able to have a similar group of peers in a group means you can more easily identify outliers against a common set of reference peers.
Compare groups for 5 core behaviours
Monitor the group’s rumination, feeding, standing, lying and resting trends.
View group activity and performance
By looking at group activity and performance, a farmer can identify any management interventions earlier or conversely see when they make a change (for example to a feed ration). This enables them to see the wholistic impact for a group of animals.
Get started with Active Tag
The complete heat and health monitoring solution
FAQs
Have any questions about Tru-Test Active Tag?
View our frequently asked questions, or for more specific questions get in touch with the team.
Utilising health insights
There are some practical ways of utilising these health insights:
Viewing details about an individual animal
Click on an animal record to view details about an individual animal. For example, you could open an animal record and click on a health event to see more details:
Using a health action list
You can create and save a rule to select a subset of animals from the health report for follow‑up actions. The health action list can then be used as the basis to draft and check animals. See Using a health action list.
Health report insights
The health report provides detailed information on all animals which have had a recent change in their behaviours:
Viewing animals with possible health issues
Animals in the Health report have had a change in behaviour and should be checked for possible health issues.
Rumination, feeding, resting, standing and lying behaviours are monitored every hour and every day for individual animals, and the animal against their peers in the same group.
Animals in the Health report should be checked daily.
Where do I see animals in the draft list?
We recommend using the Datamars Livestock mobile app. On the dashboard, click on a draft time to see more detail:
How can I ensure that animals are in optimal condition at breeding?
Using a voluntary waiting period (VWP) will allow you to choose whether to inseminate a young animal or an animal who has recently calved. This can provide benefits for animal health and welfare. It may also optimise the chances of an animal becoming pregnant.
Where do I view animals with reproductive issues?
We recommend using the Datamars Livestock mobile app. On the dashboard, tap Repro Issues.
Here you can see animals that:
- Are Anestrous - have not had a heat after calving.
- Are having Irregular heats - too many heats in a short space of time.
Where do I see the number of animals in heat?
We recommend using the Datamars Livestock mobile app. On the dashboard, you can view the number of animals in heat during the current 24‑hour period. If needed, tap Animals in Heat to see the full list, then select an individual animal record for more detailed information.
Can I integrate other farm systems and synchronise data with Datamars Livestock and Active Tag?
Yes, Datamars Livestock supports integration with drafting and sorting gates, farm management software, and national databases.
How long does data stay on an active tag?
Data will remain on the active ear tag or active collar for 10 days. The oldest data disappears first.
What is the range between the gateway and an active tag?
Up to 1000 m where there is direct line of sight.
Objects such as trees and buildings that block line of sight may interfere with the read range in that direction.
Get started with Active Tag
The complete heat and health monitoring solution
What Integrates With Active Tag?
Already have products from the Tru-Test portfolio? Check out what plays well with Active Tag!
Weighing
EID Reader
Farm Network Gateway
Dairy Drafter
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Ready to upgrade your farm?
Get in touch with the Tru-Test team to see how Active Tag can transform your farm.
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