MTS curtailed the business of digitalization of cows

2022: MTS curtails cow digitalization business

MTS has curtailed the business of digitalizing cows. The company, as its representative told Vedomosti in October 2022, sees more prospects in the agricultural sector than in animal husbandry.

{{quote "Agriculture is a rapidly growing market in terms of the Internet of things, but the size of the market and the dynamics of demand for automation solutions in animal husbandry are significantly inferior to the agricultural sector," the source explained. }}

MTS sees more prospects in the agricultural sector than in animal husbandry

According to him, MTS decided to focus on the topic of precision agriculture, where "the value of us as an operator of monitoring services transport and the provision of corrective amendments for/" GPSGLONASS-terminal on agricultural machinery is significantly higher."

The system, which the telecommunications operator planned to implement, involved the use of sensors, the so-called boluses, which transmit data on the state of the animal and its readiness for calving while at the bottom of its stomach. The cow swallows the sensor along with the feed and it remains inside throughout the animal's life. Testing of the system began in 2020.

According to experts interviewed by the newspaper, the technologies offered by MTS were expensive and solved a very narrow-profile problem. The cost of servicing the sensor is 500 rubles per month for one animal, so the use of the solution from MTS would cost the manufacturer over 20% of the net profit from one cow, points out the general director of Soyuzmolok Artem Belov.

According to farmer Alexander Pocheptsov, the owner of a large (more than 2000 hectares) closed-cycle farm in the Moscow and Vladimir regions, animal monitoring is carried out by attracted veterinarians, farmers are guided by blood and milk tests of cows, as well as external signs and their behavior to determine the condition.^[1]

2020: Launch of the project at the Village Dairy Plant

On April 10, 2020, it became known that Village Dairy"" began to use the developed livestock MTS IoT control system in livestock farms.

As the representative of MTS Alexei Merkutov told Vedomosti, the temperature of cows, the amount of water they drink and the motor activity of animals are monitored by special bolus radio sensors, which animals swallow with food.

MTS started using swallable sensors for IoT monitoring of cows

The information that sensors weighing about 300 grams register at the bottom of the stomach, fall into the analytical system and make it possible to understand whether, for example, a cow is sick, is it going to calve, etc. Sensors under their own weight settle at the bottom of the multi-chamber stomach of a cow, in a scar, and remain there throughout the life of the animal, explained in MTS.

By the time the project begins, equipment and its maintenance are expensive for farms, the company says - connecting a sensor costs up to 500 rubles per month per animal. Therefore, the system will be most in demand among large and medium-sized dairy farms with a livestock of 300 animals, MTS admits.

There are already several options for sensors for cows on the market: some animals must swallow devices, others hang around their necks. Among  the manufacturers of Huawei  and SAP.

MTS considers agriculture one of the most promising areas for digitalization. Over the past five years, by April 2020, investments in agricultural technologies in the world have grown 2.5 times. The Russian market is only in the formation stage, they say in the company.

Projects in agriculture are also engaged in Megafon and VimpelCom, their representatives told the publication. Megaphone has been providing access to the cattle monitoring system since 2019 - a tag is attached to the animal, which collects activity data and determines the temperature.^[2]

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