Tech Tracking for Australian Cattle

 Semtech Corp. announced last month a collaboration with Smart Paddock, an Australian company providing smart tags for livestock in that country and New Zealand. 

The Camarillo company’s role is to incorporate its long range, low power (LoRa) devices and LoRa wide area network (LoRaWAN) standard into Smart Paddock’s Bluebell smart global positioning system ear tags to monitor livestock location in real time, according to a release from Semtech. 

The Bluebell ear tags are also used to analyze the cattle’s behavioral data to solve livestock management issues, the release said. 

Bluebell smart GPS ear tags are the smallest and lightest in the industry, with more than 1,200 tracking devices deployed over the last three years across farm properties in Australia and New Zealand, according to Smart Paddock. There are an additional 10,000 deployments expected over the next year. 

Darren Wolchyn, founder and chief executive of Smart Paddock, said that to develop the ear tag, the company researched and evaluated all the wireless communications protocols on the market. 

“To meet our customer needs of a low-cost ear tag that could be deployed in the thousands over large farm properties, LoRaWAN came out on top of all other technologies for its long-distance capabilities,” Wolchyn said in a statement. 

Marc Pégulu, vice president of Internet of Things (IoT) product marketing and strategy at Semtech, said that Smart Paddock’s use of LoRaWAN is an example of where IoT technology is shaping the future of farming and making it smarter and more efficient. 

“The benefits of LoRa devices that both minimize expenses and reduce environmental impact of any IoT solution is promising for the field of smart agriculture,” Pégulu said in a statement.