GLOBAL food giant Nestlé is trialling computerised monitoring of dairy cows, with an eye to enhancing the animal welfare assurances it offers its customers.

Nestlé and Allflex Livestock Intelligence are cooperating on a plan to pilot Allflex’s 'SenseHub' dairy cow monitoring system. This collaboration aims to provide Nestlé with full visibility into the wellbeing of individual cows and the herd according to a set of key performance indicators.

This will in turn deliver information on the reproductive, health, nutritional and wellbeing status of individual cows and groups. Allflex claims that its system has the potential to drive continuous improvement on animal welfare, more efficient farm management and more productive dairy farm operations.

This project builds on Allflex’s long-standing relationship with Nestlé, founded in 2014 when Allflex was chosen to lead the cow monitoring and welfare aspects of the Dairy Farming Institute in China.

“We are very pleased to expand our cooperation with Nestlé, a company that shares our belief in the importance of cow wellbeing as an element in responsible production of milk-based food products,” said CEO Dr Stefan Weiskopf. “SenseHub enables multiple aspects of cow wellbeing to be measured, and we are excited to be sharing these abilities with Nestlé, to help consumers be better informed and confident in the food they feed their families.”