OT integrations

Passive low-frequency (134.2 kHz) button tag in every ear — the animal's permanent electronic ID. No battery; powered by the reader field. This is the backbone: every other system keys off this number.

How it connects: Read by panel readers at the parlor and sort gates, and by handheld wand readers for chute work. Readers push tag + timestamp to the farm PC or direct to cloud.

Protocol path

ISO 11784/11785 FDX-B → reader → USB/serial/Ethernet

Data frequency

Every pass — at least 3× daily at milking

Battery-powered neck collar or ear sensor with accelerometer + microphone. Measures rumination minutes, activity, eating time, and panting — the raw signal behind heat detection and early illness alerts.

How it connects: Collars radio to fixed antenna base stations in the barns (proprietary sub-GHz). The base station bridges to the vendor cloud over the farm internet; HerdOS pulls via the vendor API.

Protocol path

Proprietary RF → base station → vendor cloud → REST API

Data frequency

Summarized every 15–20 min per animal

Solar-powered GPS collar for grazing groups. Reports position for geofencing, plus coarse activity. Only pasture groups need them — barn animals are located by reader hits.

How it connects: Collar → LoRaWAN gateway on the grain leg (3 mi range) → network server → MQTT/webhook into HerdOS. The west-fence solar repeater fills the P5–P9 shadow.

Protocol path

LoRaWAN 915 MHz → gateway → MQTT / HTTPS webhook

Data frequency

Ping every 60–90 s (10 min when stationary)

The 45-station rotary's own controller: per-stall EID reads, milk weight, conductivity (mastitis signal), flow rate, and milking duration for every turn of the platform.

How it connects: Parlor PC exports per-milking records. Modern systems expose a REST/ODBC interface; older ones drop DHI-format flat files to a shared folder that a sync agent watches and ships to the cloud.

Protocol path

Vendor API / ODBC / DHI flat-file sync

Data frequency

Per milking session (3× daily), synced within 5 min

Temperature, agitation, and volume probes on both bulk tanks. Proves cold-chain compliance for every load and catches compressor failures before milk is lost.

How it connects: 4–20 mA / digital probes into a cellular telemetry box — independent of farm internet on purpose, so an outage never blinds the tank.

Protocol path

Sensor loop → cellular telemetry → vendor cloud → webhook

Data frequency

Every 60 s

EID-triggered gate off the parlor exit that drafts individual animals to the hospital pen, breeding rail, or footbath without a person standing there.

How it connects: Gate controller holds a daily sort list pushed from HerdOS each morning; confirms each sort event back with tag + timestamp.

Protocol path

Reader + PLC → local API over farm LAN

Data frequency

Event-driven at every exit

Pulse meters on well lines and waterers, plus an on-site weather station for THI (heat stress), rainfall, and wind. Water intake drop is one of the earliest illness signals at pen level.

How it connects: Pulse counters wired to LoRa nodes; weather station on WiFi. Both land on the same LoRaWAN gateways as the GPS collars.

Protocol path

LoRaWAN / WiFi → MQTT

Data frequency

Water: 5 min · Weather: 60 s

Load-cell scale head on the mixer wagon records every ingredient loaded and every pen delivered — actual vs. ration, shrink, and feed cost per cwt.

How it connects: Scale head syncs over WiFi when the wagon passes the shop, or via a cellular puck on the tractor.

Protocol path

Scale head → WiFi/cellular → vendor cloud → CSV/API

Data frequency

Per load (8–12 loads/day)

Every drug purchase, prescription, and chute-side treatment — matched to EID for withdrawal-period enforcement so no treated animal's milk ever reaches the tank.

How it connects: Vet clinic pushes scripts electronically; chute-side treatments entered on the phone app against a wand-scanned EID. Withdrawal timers computed automatically.

Protocol path

Clinic export / manual entry with EID scan

Data frequency

Event-driven