Brennan Jameson R, L Parsons Ira, Harrison Meredith, Menendez Hector M
Department of Animal Science, South Dakota State University, Rapid City, SD 57703, USA.
C-Lock Inc., Rapid City, SD 57703, USA.
Transl Anim Sci. 2024 Jun 7;8:txae092. doi: 10.1093/tas/txae092. eCollection 2024.
Advancements in technology have ushered in a new era of sensor-based measurement and management of livestock production systems. These sensor-based technologies have the ability to automatically monitor feeding, growth, and enteric emissions for individual animals across confined and extensive production systems. One challenge with sensor-based technologies is the large amount of data generated, which can be difficult to access, process, visualize, and monitor information in real time to ensure equipment is working properly and animals are utilizing it correctly. A solution to this problem is the development of application programming interfaces () to automate downloading, visualizing, and summarizing datasets generated from precision livestock technology (). For this methods paper, we develop three APIs and accompanying processes for rapid data acquisition, visualization, systems tracking, and summary statistics for three technologies (SmartScale, SmartFeed, and GreenFeed) manufactured by C-Lock Inc (Rapid City, SD). Program R markdown documents and example datasets are provided to facilitate greater adoption of these techniques and to further advance PLT. The methodology presented successfully downloaded data from the cloud and generated a series of visualizations to conduct systems checks, animal usage rates, and calculate summary statistics. These tools will be essential for further adoption of precision technology. There is huge potential to further leverage APIs to incorporate a wide range of datasets such as weather data, animal locations, and sensor data to facilitate decision-making on time scales relevant to researchers and livestock managers.
技术进步开启了基于传感器的畜牧生产系统测量与管理的新时代。这些基于传感器的技术能够自动监测圈养和粗放式生产系统中个体动物的进食、生长及肠道排放情况。基于传感器的技术面临的一个挑战是产生的大量数据，这些数据难以实时访问、处理、可视化及监测信息，以确保设备正常运行且动物正确使用。解决这个问题的一个办法是开发应用程序编程接口（APIs），以自动下载、可视化并汇总由精准畜牧技术（PLT）生成的数据集。在这篇方法论文中，我们为C-Lock公司（南达科他州拉皮德城）生产的三种技术（SmartScale、SmartFeed和GreenFeed）开发了三个APIs及相应流程，用于快速数据采集、可视化、系统跟踪和汇总统计。提供了R markdown程序文档和示例数据集，以促进这些技术的更广泛采用，并进一步推动精准畜牧技术的发展。所介绍的方法成功地从云端下载了数据，并生成了一系列可视化结果，用于进行系统检查、动物使用率统计及计算汇总统计数据。这些工具对于进一步采用精准技术至关重要。进一步利用APIs整合诸如天气数据、动物位置和传感器数据等广泛数据集，以促进在与研究人员和畜牧管理人员相关的时间尺度上进行决策，具有巨大潜力。
