David Philpot
Mapipedia has been working very closely with Ceres Tag since the last Beef. Lots of exciting things have been happening. Mapipedia is now being used to display data and insights from Ceres Tags in over 20 countries. Animals being tracked are not just cattle, but also sheep, dingo, pigs, giraffes, and other wildlife species. It’s been a fun journey and one that I’m very passionate about. I certainly appreciate the opportunity that Beef gave Mapipedia 2 years ago to help Mapipedia get started. Mapipedia has been used to:
- Alert users to escaped and stolen animals by detecting when the tags leave a geofence. This has resulted in reduced risk of livestock being hit by trucks and trains.
- Save animals from bushfires by allowing users to see where their animals are and cut open fences to help them escape the flames.
- Enable users to understand land utilisation better. Some users realised that their animals never even go into 20% of their land!
- Understand the impact and spread of biosecurity risks on their animals.
- Estimate the pasture feed intake (PFI) for cattle and estimate the resulting methane emissions. This is a relatively new feature but there is a lot of interest in it.
- Accelerometer alerts from the tags themselves has helped to understand when animals are being attacked by dogs which help to reduce the overall impact by taking action sooner.
- Understand the social behaviours of animals and increase the pregnancy rates.
Soon we hope to add in the weight gain over time for the animals so the farmers can then understand the PFI to weight ratio which will be a critical input for breeding and sustainability.
For more information on Mapipedia visit their website- https://mapipedia.com/
