Tracking sheep indoors or on pasture using Bluetooth and UHF RFID for welfare management: feedback from trials conducted in Scotland and France

Precision Livestock Farming tools and digital technologies can have value for welfare management, including assessment of behaviour and detection of any changes. It can provide non-diagnostic and non-specific indicators to the farmers, informing them that welfare may have been impacted, and that further investigation is needed. Monitoring the visits to points of interest and/or resources, such as water trough or feeder, can be useful in the potential detection of welfare problems. Bluetooth beacons (BLE beacons) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID tags have been tested to track sheep’ attendance in different environmental conditions, alongside regular welfare assessments. In Scotland, BLE beacons have been used to monitor the attendance of ewes at feeding points, as well as the ewe-lamb bond on pasture. UHF tags have been tested in Scotland to monitor visits to resources on pasture, whilst in France they have been used indoors to monitor the water trough attendance by adult dairy ewes and fattening lambs. Here we will compare the advantages and disadvantages of the use of these technologies in the different trial environments. Although these technologies offer encouraging preliminary results, there are important issues of adaptation to the breeding environment (humidity, metallic environment in the shed, power supply and battery life, etc.), which need to be taken into consideration to assist with the development of future trials using these technologies in a variety of environments and grazing systems.