Having recently won the best newcomer award in the Enterprise Ireland innovation arena at this year’s National Ploughing Championship, HerdEye, an innovative west of Ireland agri-tech start-up is bringing something new to farmers. HerdEye has developed a proprietary vision system to monitor birthing cows to reduce the workload for farmers while at the same time improving animal welfare during calving.
HerdEye’s vision system uses artificial intelligence to monitor cows by tracking tell-tale calving signs in real time. Their system can monitor multiple cows simultaneously alerting farmers when the cow is about to calve and if a difficulty arises. This allows the farmers workload during calving season to be drastically reduced while at the same time ensuring every cow is given the upmost care and attention.
The team behind HerdEye have combined their extensive experience in agriculture, design and software development to improve farm welfare and sustainability by bringing agriculture into the digital age. Ciaran, one of the co-founder says “we have developed a digital midwife for cows and it’s just the beginning of our journey to automate agriculture”.
All three co-founders met while working in a Galway based co-working space in 2015 and have remained friends since. The team is currently based in the Portershed, Galway where Feeney says each member of the community has played a role in the development of the business.
More information about this and future developments from HerdEye can be found at www.herdeye.ie
