A ‘Smart’ Examination to Improve Livestock Management Efficiency

Mar 13, 2024

A Texas A&M AgriLife animal nutritionist believes precision livestock management — utilizing an extra set of eyes and ears and a little artificial intelligence — can go a long way toward making today’s livestock operations more efficient.

Computer monitors and cameras, along with artificial intelligence, are part of a precision livestock management system being researched by Luis Tedeschi, Ph.D., in the Texas A&M Department of Animal Science. (Michael Miller/Texas A&M AgriLife)

Luis Tedeschi, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research Fellow and Chancellor EDGES Fellow in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Animal Science, is looking for cost-effective and noninvasive methods of monitoring feeding behaviors in livestock operations that producers can adapt to improve their bottom line – all through alerts on a cell phone or computer.

Texas has about 3 million cattle in feedlots and another 10 million cows, heifers, steers, bulls and calves in different feeding situations annually.

Tedeschi said if the managers of these livestock use modern technological advances or “smart” practices, then the industry can better understand what is happening at the feed bunk and in the pens to make management decisions accordingly.

Research goals to harness precision livestock farming

Over the next three years, he will create and utilize a precision livestock farming facility at Texas A&M to determine where some of the most significant changes can be made. His research is funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant: Harnessing Precision Livestock Farming to Support Smart Agriculture for Sustainable Beef Cattle Production.

Tedeschi said his goals with this project are to:

Make artificial intelligence an invaluable and accessible tool for producers.
Make production sustainable from an economic, social and environmental perspective.
Ensure the producers are on top of the cutting-edge and innovative advancements they can utilize to improve their production.
Deliver services leveraging cutting-edge research, sophisticated data analysis and artificial intelligence within a precision livestock farming data framework. This could create opportunities for others to use the technology and create their own business to assist producers.

The project falls under the Research Facilities Act Program approved by Congress in 2023 and will include modifications at the department’s Animal Nutritional and Physiology Center. For the next three years, the team will collect data after setting up all the equipment and measuring the system’s precision and accuracy.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.