Precision livestock farming: digital tools every practitioner should know

Introduction

Effective and efficient livestock management necessarily relies on observation, experience and record-keeping to assess animal productivity, health and performance. Currently, digital tools are reshaping that reality. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) uses sensors, cameras, and data analytics to continuously monitor the behavior, physiology, and environment of individual animals in real time. These technologies give practitioners a new level of insight into herd health, welfare, and productivity. Beyond improving efficiency, PLF enables earlier disease detection, reduced antibiotic use, and more sustainable production systems. As agriculture enters the data-driven era, understanding the digital tools behind PLF is becoming essential for every professional involved in animal care and management.

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Is precision livestock farming a solution or just a tool?

PLF offers powerful tools to enhance farm operations, but needs skilled practitioners to interpret the data and translate insights into meaningful decisions.

The livestock sector is under unprecedented pressure to deliver higher productivity while improving animal welfare, reducing environmental impact, and meeting consumer expectations for transparency and sustainability. “Traditional” herd management methods often rely on periodic checks and subjective assessments, which may overlook early signs of illness or stress. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) addresses this challenge by combining real-time data collection, continuous monitoring, and automated analysis to support more informed and timely decisions. For practitioners, PLF enables a shift from treatment to prevention. By detecting subtle changes in behavior, feeding, rumination, or temperature, these systems help identify decreases in production efficiency, disease or discomfort long before visible symptoms appear. Beyond animal health, the integration of digital data into herd-health planning improves feed efficiency, reproduction, and environmental performance, making farms more efficient, resilient and sustainable.

However, PLF is not a magic solution that will transform every farm into a super efficient one. PLF provides tools that can (should, when possible) be incorporated and adapted to each situation. But skilled and trained practitioners (farmers, nutritionists, agronomists, vets, etc) are essential to interpret the outputs.

What are the key digital tools in precision livestock farming?

Precision livestock farming tools range from wearable sensors to AI-powered cameras, each serving to monitor different aspects of animal health and farm productivity.

PLF currently provides a wide amount of digital technologies designed to observe, record, and interpret almost every aspect of animal life. From sensors worn by individual animals, to milking robots, AI-powered cameras and integrated farm dashboards, these tools transform raw data into practical insights that support daily management and decision-making on the farm. Here are some examples that are already available for application:

• Wearable and biometric sensors — such as smart ear tags, rumination collars, and boluses — continuously measure activity, temperature, and feeding patterns. These data streams allow early detection of lameness, fever, or reduced intake long before clinical symptoms appear.
• Vision-based systems use cameras and artificial intelligence to assess temperature, posture, gait, and behavior, while acoustic monitoring tools can detect coughing or distress calls. Together, these tools form the sensory layer of the “digital barn,” offering practitioners a continuous view of animal welfare and performance.
• Equally important are environmental, feeding, and data-integration systems. Smart feeders and automatic weighing platforms quantify individual feed intake and growth rates, while barn sensors track temperature, humidity, and ammonia to anticipate heat stress or respiratory risks.

All these inputs converge in decision-support dashboards, where machine-learning models allow the translation of raw data into alerts and visual summaries. For practitioners and farm managers, these platforms turn fragmented information into an actionable one — highlighting which animals need attention and when. Yet, as with any diagnostic tool, the practitioner’s interpretation remains essential to turn digital indicators into meaningful, welfare-oriented decisions.

How can PLF be integrated into daily farm operations?

For PLF tools to be effective, the priority should not be having the latest hardware available on the market, but integrating them into existing daily workflows with a clear purpose and ensuring that data drives practical actions.

The most effective approach is to begin with a clear objective (e.g. monitoring rumination, heat stress, or lameness) and start small, using one or two validated tools before scaling up. Data from sensors and dashboards should be incorporated into existing herd-health protocols, linking digital alerts to on-farm actions: management changes, nutritional or reproductive checks, inspection, treatment, etc.

Livestock advisors play a central coordinating role. They ensure that PLF data are interpreted correctly, that alerts are meaningful, and that results feed back into productivity and welfare plans. Regular farm meetings can align sensor outputs with practical outcomes — for example, linking reduced rumination alerts to nutrition audits. Over time, practitioners can build local “digital baselines” for each herd, enabling early deviation detection and performance benchmarking. In essence, PLF becomes most powerful when translated into informed, timely, human decisions guided by professional expertise.

What are the current challenges in implementing precision livestock farming?

Despite its rapid progress, Precision Livestock Farming still faces some practical challenges. The initial cost of sensors, software subscriptions, and connectivity infrastructure can be high, while the diversity of brands and platforms often leads to poor interoperability — making data integration across systems difficult. These barriers are gradually being overcome thanks to falling hardware costs, improved communication between software, and public or private initiatives supporting digital adoption in agriculture.

The growing amount of information produced by PLF also highlights the need for proper training. Rather than being a limitation, this creates new opportunities for veterinarians, advisors, and farmers to develop valuable digital skills that strengthen their professional expertise.

Data validation and reliability remain key: algorithms trained under specific housing or breed conditions may perform inconsistently elsewhere. Practitioners should therefore rely on tools that have been independently tested and calibrated for their production system.

Finally, as data collection of animal and farm expands, ethical and governance considerations become important, including who owns the data, how securely it is stored, and how it may be shared or monetized. Addressing these issues transparently will help maintain trust and ensure that digitalization continues to enhance animal welfare and farm resilience.

Take home message

There is now a wide range of ready available PLF tools (from activity collars and ear tags to cameras and automatic feeders) and their real power appears when they become part of everyday routines on the farm, guiding feeding plans, health checks and welfare decisions.

Advances in artificial intelligence, sensor and cloud analytics are expected to enable continuous, herd-level insights that were once unimaginable. These tools enhance professionals’ expertise, freeing time for smarter, more sustainable, and welfare-focused farming.

References

Khan,D., Zaman, H., Sultan, A., Ahmad, M.T., Bibi, R. Athar, H., Bibi, S. Ahmed, H., Yasin, U. ^& Shahbaz, M., 2025. Exploring the Potential of Precision Livestock Farming Technologies for Enhancing Animal Welfare and Public Health. Sch J Agric Vet Sci, 2025 Jun 12(6): 205-212. https://doi.org/10.36347/sjavs.2025.v12i06.001

Kleen, J.C. & Guatteo, R., 2023. Precision Livestock Farming: What Does It Contain and What Are the Perspectives? Animals 2023, 13(5), 779; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13050779

Neculai-Valeanu, A.-S., Sanduleanu, C., & Porosnicu, I. (2025). From tradition to precision: Leveraging digital tools to improve cattle health and welfare. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 12, Article 1549512. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2025.1549512

Papakonstantinou, G. I., Tzounis, A., Kokkora, M., & Tzounis, V. (2024). Precision livestock farming technology: Applications and challenges of animal welfare and climate change. Agriculture, 14(4), 620. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14040620