Monitoring System for Dry Matter Intake in Ruminants

Abstract

Among the Sustainable Development Goals approved by the UN is “2 zero hunger,” One of its targets is to increase investments in agricultural research and extension services and technological development to improve production capacity. Dry Matter Intake (DMI) is a fundamental parameter in animal nutrition research because it estimates the overall supply of nutrients, especially those evaluated during research experiments. This project describes developing a system embedded in sheep cages that experts use in animal production to estimate feed consumption and rejection. This system allows, in an automated way, to monitor and store information about the weight of feed consumed by production animals and the temperature and humidity of the animal’s environment. Furthermore, the system extracts this information through software that allows data collection while minimizing human intervention.