Animal management systems

Abstract

A system for controlling and monitoring animals, including control devices (10) that are fittable to the animals and arranged for communication with one another. Each control device (10) includes means for determining the position of an animal relative to a second animal, means for determining the distance between the two animals, and means for determining movement of the animals relative to one another. The system also includes stimulus application devices (12) arranged for selective application of a stimulus to an animal based on the relative position, distance and/or movement of the animals.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]This invention relates generally to the field of electronically controlling and monitoring animals.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Traditionally, physical fences have been used to contain livestock within defined areas. More recently, virtual fencing devices have been described for attachment to animals. Generally, these devices use the application of auditory and / or electrical stimuli to control the spatial location of the animal.[0003]A number of inventions have addressed the issue of virtual fencing in general, but each of these devices rely on the presence of a central controller to determine, for example, the location of the animal, the location of virtual boundaries, when to apply and stop applying stimuli, etc. While these devices work satisfactorily, they are limited by inherencies of the detector devices used, eg the range of a GPS satellite network, locations of buried wires, location of a central transmitter and / or receiver, etc.[0004]U.S. Pat...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0022]Incorporation of a radio signal transmitter and receiver into the control devices provides the advantage of allowing determination of the relative position, distance and/or movement of the animals based on signal strength evaluation, pinging or some other techniques known in telemetry.

[0023]It is further preferred that determining whether a stimulus (and strength or intensity thereof) needs to be applied to one or more of the animals may include additional attributes not related to relative position, distance and/or movement. This provides the advantage of allowing the stimulus to be applied/stopped based on a number of additional factors, such as environmental attributes, animal identity, sex, behaviour and/or posture.

[0024]In a further preferred embodiment, the control devices are arranged to allow data transmission along a chain of said control devices, eg so that data sampled and determined by a first control device, which is representative of a first animal's behaviour, can be passed onto control devices carried by other animals in the vicinity of the first animal. In such case, the data transmitted would include a unique control device identifier, thus allowing identification of individual animals.

[0025]This then provides the advantage that such data can be passed from control device to co

Problems solved by technology

While these devices work satisfactorily, they are limited by inherencies of the detector devices used, eg the ran

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