How many steps does a cow take in a day? Wearable tech could transform Arizona dairy farms

GILA BEND — Dairy cow No. 26453 lives with over 8,000 other Holsteins at Arizona Dairy Company. She spends her days in the shade under a massive awning, except when it’s time to shuffle into the milking parlor. The whole time, she’s cooled by giant fans and misters.

The only exception is if she or another cow has to go to a hospital pen. And on one particular summer day this year — though you never would have guessed it looking at her — dairy cow No. 26453 was feeling sick.

How would you, or any other human, know that? She’s wearing something akin to a Fitbit, or at least, a cow version of it. As of April, like her herd mates, No. 26453 wears a special device on her collar that tracks her step counts and rumination (a fancy word for “chewing cud”).

On May 29, No. 26453 gave birth to a calf. Seth Nichols pointed to a small icon of a baby carriage next to the cow’s information on the computer. Nichols is a data analyst at Arizona Dairy Company, and that means it’s his job to help translate mountains of data on the thousands of cows at the dairy into information that can be used to produce better milk and keep cows and calves healthy.

After calving, cows enter a transition period, a time when they are more vulnerable to certain diseases and ailments. At most dairies, Nichols said, farmers realize that a cow is sick when it shows visible symptoms. Maybe it’s breathing heavily, or its ears are turned down, or it’s stopped moving around.

But this June, No. 26453 showed up on a list of sick cows before she ever looked like there was something wrong. That’s because her collar recorded changes in her step count and rumination, and the computer automatically put her on a list of animals that needed attention.

Sure enough, when the dairy’s care team went to check on her, they found that she had a uterus infection.

No. 26453 got treatment, and she’s doing better now. Like all the other cows at the dairy, her charts don’t just show her step count and rumination but also the amount of milk she’s producing, the content of fat and other nutrients in the milk she produces, how many times she’s calved and more. It’s data that used to be kept in paper files, but Nichols and others say digitizing the information has the potential to make the dairy better for the animals, more efficient and even more sustainable.

It’s one example of the ways animal medicine is advancing and becoming more precise, particularly animal medicine on commercial farms in Arizona and elsewhere.

Farmers, some seeking novel ways of keeping their animals healthy and others hoping to address labor and sustainability issues, are adopting or planning to adopt automated, high-tech solutions like cow pedometers, computerized file systems and diagnostic tools, more advanced artificial insemination techniques, robotic cleaning devices and more.

But not all farms take the technological approach. There are many reasons for that — some aren’t interested in tech, or it’s not their priority — but one common factor, industry experts say, comes down to money: If farmers can’t afford the technology and they can meet their bottom line without it, they won’t invest in it. 

Veterinarians say many different types of farms can operate in ways that are healthy for the animals in their care, whether they are high-tech or not. But farmers’ choices about whether to adopt technology like step-counting collars will shape the future of the industry — and what kinds of farms remain.

Treating individual animals — and whole herds

Arizona Dairy Company is one of Dr. Michelle Schack's clients. She's a veterinarian who visits different-sized farms all over the state tending to cattle and other farm animals.

One of those is Tirrito Farm in Willcox, about three hours east of Gila Bend, where, one recent day, another cow didn’t seem to be feeling so great. But this ailment wasn’t caught by a device. A human worker, not an automated one, noticed the cow showing visible signs of distress. So Schack, who was already headed to Tirrito Farm for a routine visit, went to check them out.

This operation looks pretty different than the one in Gila Bend. Cows laze in green pastures irrigated by sprinklers that spray out wide arcs of water. White fences ring the fields, flanking a long driveway that leads down to a pond with a fountain and a big, spacious building. The outdoor foyer is emblazoned with the Tirrito crest.

When Schack came out to do an exam on the cow, she found that it had a metabolic condition called ketosis, which affects cows that have recently given birth. She tested the blood of the other seven cows that had recently given birth — there are only about 50 cows total on the farm at the moment — and found two others with the same condition that weren’t yet showing any clinical signs.

Schack thinks the sick cows might have been caught sooner if there were more tech on the farm, like the cow pedometers at Arizona Dairy Company. But she said the traditional methods are fine in terms of animal welfare (after all, the cows were treated and are back to normal now).

She also thinks that as technology advances, dairy farms in particular will have two options: to scale up and get bigger, or to get much smaller and fill niche markets for consumers who want an upscale, “back to nature” type of product.

Tirrito Farm falls under the second category, and Yuri Tirrito, who co-owns the farm with her husband, isn’t interested in technological bells and whistles. 

Tirrito grew up around cows. Her grandfather came from El Rio de Sonora, Mexico, to Naco, Sonora, with 500 head of cattle to sell to buyers in the United States. Tirrito says she and her husband started the farm because she wanted a couple of cows. Then they decided to turn it into a business.

Now they produce 400 gallons of milk a week, which they process on site and sell to small outlets like Natural Grocers in Tucson. They also set aside, from that 400 gallons, 50 gallons a week for goat cheese and 60 gallons a week for cow cheese. Unlike big dairies, which pool together thousands of gallons of milk, pasteurize it, bottle it at a big co-op, and sell to grocery stores, Tirrito Farm is a one-stop shop. 

Tirrito, clad in a cowboy hat and heeled boots, walked through the rooms where workers perform routine tests to ensure that their milk is safe for human consumption, where they pasteurize and bottle the milk themselves. She says her farm’s milk is processed in a manner closer to the way milk used to be produced — pasteurized, not homogenized — and that some lactose-intolerant people can consume it without issue. 

Besides, she doesn’t see the need for extra medical tech. She has two veterinarians on retainer, including Schack. The vets keep close tabs on the herd, which is healthy. And she has a team of dedicated workers who know every single cow by name.

“Too much technology, we don't have," Tirrito said. "We just have whatever we need to make this operation successful.”

But Tirrito, in her insistence on keeping things small and as “back to nature” as possible, might be an exception. Dr. Justin Welsh, executive director of U.S. Livestock Technical Services at Merck Animal Health, said he believes animal health is moving from a herd-based decision-making process to one tailored to individual animals.

“That's our goal, to use animal health, intelligence or newer technologies to move into that realm where we're able to … identify (illnesses) potentially even sooner than a human can,” Welsh said. 

He described a new device from Merck Animal Health called Whisper On Arrival. It's currently used for beef cattle, not dairy cows, but it incorporates artificial intelligence to help farmers decide which cows need treatments such as antibiotics for respiratory diseases, and which do not. Much like the cow pedometer, it’s a product aimed at improving individual animals’ health and helping farmers manage the health of large herds more effectively.

That's something Schack emphasized: Evaluating the whole herd is just as important as evaluating individual animals. And that comes down to the management of the farm as much as the gizmos the cows are wearing.

“Technology is only as good as the people using it,” she said. “You can have the best farm in the world. But if your employees don't know how to use the technology or how to treat the cows, it's not going to be successful.”

And who works with the cows is directly tied to how a farmer finds and prioritizes labor.

Where technology and labor collide

Gerry Hernandez, the operations manager at Tirrito Farm, can walk into the field and point to each cow by name: Nerviosa, Bonita, a bull named Curly. 

“I talk to (the cows) like they’re my kids,” said Hernandez, who grew up working in the milking parlors at bigger dairy farms in California. He made his way to Willcox and took a job at Tirrito Farm pulling weeds until he could start working with the cows again. 

“I love what I do,” he added. “I take pride in it.”

Meanwhile, Justin Stewart, owner of Arizona Dairy Company, wants as much of the dairy to be operated by automation as possible. The dairy recently added a robotic feed pusher to replace tractors driven by humans. Stewart envisions adding six more of those, as well as new shade structures with 24 robots to milk the cows, all to be implemented within the next 10 years. 

Both farms have to contend with issues of labor and costs, and they’ve adopted different management styles and uses of technology accordingly.

At Arizona Dairy Company, automating animal care isn’t just a matter of cattle health. It’s also a way to address what its owners see as labor challenges, now and in the future.

“The last five to six years have been extremely difficult on Arizona dairies,” he said, describing hurdles to recruit workers. “Technology has (lent) itself to help us streamline the labor.”

At Tirrito Farm, things look different, but the operation is not immune to economic pressure. Four full-time employees, including Hernandez, know most everything about every cow on the farm, and they can do that because it’s small enough to track. 

But Tirrito said beyond their regular workers, who earn a living wage and receive health benefits and a 401(k), the rest of their seasonal field workers are on contracts because the farm can’t afford to pay benefits to that many people.

And Tirrito Farm is not just a dairy but also an agro-tourism destination with offerings that have expanded to include orchards, grapevines, a brewery (where they brew custom beers with their own hops), beehives, luxury suites, a restaurant and more.

The Tirritos hope their expansion will pay off in the long run, making their farm an attraction for corporate retreats and private events, and filling a niche that Schack thinks wouldn’t be viable for all dairies in America.

Even so, Tirrito Farm isn’t profitable yet — they’re new, and just opened in April — and Tirrito doesn’t think it will be for another five to 10 years. She and her husband can afford to take the gamble, but they’re an exception given the current landscape of the dairy industry.

They hope their project will take hold as some consumers want more sustainable options for their food. Still, big farms that use lots of technology claim they’re more sustainable, too.

Does technology make cattle farms more sustainable?

Globally, livestock account for a little over 14% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Cattle make up the biggest share of those emissions, accounting for about 65% of livestock-produced emissions.

Put another way: Cows, whether in a herd of 50 or 5,000, eat a lot of food, drink a lot of water and expel a lot of methane. According to the raw numbers, they’re not the most sustainable animals out there.

Stewart, Tirrito and Welsh all expressed an affinity for sustainability, but images of sustainability from operation to operation look quite different.

Take, for instance, the cows’ diet. At Tirrito Farm, cows eat the leftovers from the brewery, a type of wet grain called brewer’s green that Hernandez describes as “candy” for the animals (they love the taste, and it cuts down costs and saves waste). At Arizona Dairy Company, the cows eat a specific diet formulated by a nutritionist.

But although Tirrito’s operation is smaller, it also uses water to keep the livestock on fields of green grass, and they need more land for fewer cows for that grass to survive, Schack said (too many cows on one field and the grass would be trampled underfoot). 

Arizona Dairy Company and Merck Animal Health both tout the increased efficiency that technology is bringing to their operations.

“Healthier animals are more sustainable," said Welsh of Merck Animal Health. "They use less resources.” 

Both farms make tradeoffs. But small operations like Tirrito, while visually appealing and perhaps resembling a fairytale image of what a dairy farm might look like, simply can't meet demand around the world. So big farms will continue to exist, because the demand isn’t going away.

“This is not sustainable to feed the entire world. We can't feed the number of people that are on this earth with farms like this,” Schack said.

Those big farms can choose to take part in a voluntary net zero initiative across the dairy industry, Schack added, but it’s not required, and change is in large part driven by consumer demand.

So how does a consumer balance animal welfare, labor ethics and sustainability, not to mention cost? Some guides suggest limiting the amount of dairy or meat products you eat on certain days of the week, opting instead for more sustainable alternatives. Maybe a certain approach to dairy or meat aligns with your framework, so you choose to buy at a farmer’s market or select a certain company’s products at the supermarket.

But if that doesn’t work for you, Schack thinks the most important thing you can do is get out into the community and see things for yourself.

“If you're really interested in where your milk comes from," Schack said, "visit the farm and talk to your farmer, because you can tell who cares.”

Independent coverage of bioscience in Arizona is supported by a grant from the Flinn Foundation.

Melina Walling is a bioscience reporter who covers COVID-19, health, technology, agriculture and the environment. You can contact her via email at mwalling@gannett.com or on Twitter @MelinaWalling.