Excessive heat load (EHL), or heat stress, can be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of livestock (potentially resulting in death), as well as leading to reduced feed intake, fertility and milk production.
For primary producers this equates to a loss of income and increase in operational costs. Therefore, being forewarned and knowing when to implement effective heat stress management programs, is crucial to a productive livestock industry.
Responding quickly to excessive heat load events
By monitoring relative humidity, wind speed and black globe temperature, Heat Load Index and Accumulated Heat Load Unit calculations can be made. This informs feedlot operators of the real-time heat stress conditions experienced by livestock which, in turn, provides an accurate
assessment of what effective heat stress management programs may be taken.
Solution
It is for this reason a feedlot operator from Western QLD turned to Pacific Data Systems for a solution.
PDS recommended implementing their SPOKEdata technology - a remote 3G monitoring solution that would enabled crucial data can be viewed both ‘back at base’ and offsite via a remote web portal.
With added alarm functionailty, this provided more visibility of current heat stress conditions, which would allow rapid responses to incidents.
Localised weather updates
In the harsh outback, heat stress conditions can change very rapidly. Because of this, logging intervals were programmed for every 5 mins, with alarms included should heat load thresholds
be exceeded. Should this occur, SMS alarms are to authorised site contacts.
enabling remote access via secure, user-defined web portal, and added alarm functionality.
This allows staff to make a rapid, informed decision as to whether or not to implement their pre-arranged heat stress management procedures.
With a limited budget to work with, PDS were able to implement a solution that more than satisfied their requirements.
Benefits
- peace of mind that livestock wellbeing is closely monitored
- complete automation - no manual measurements/calculations
- hardware withstanding harsh conditions
- remote access from any web-enabled device
- ease of installation
