The Internet of Cows is moo-ving fast … no bull!

If you worry the Internet of Things is bollocks and that the industry's just milking an old idea, think again: research outfit Arcluster has declared that the “Connected Cow and Farm” market will become a US$10.75 billion concern in 2021, a rather nice jump from today's $1.27 billion.

Byte-blowing bovines are going to drive most of the growth, says Arcluster's research director Arun Nirmal, who says “the intersection of highly sophisticated automation and M2M technologies combined with the application of Industrial Internet of Things in this space is set to disrupt the industry over the next decade."

How will cows be disrupted?

The Connected Cow market apparently comprises seven sub-markets, namely:

• Health Monitoring
• Mating Management
• Herd Management
• Automated Milking
• Comfort and Cleaning
• Automated Feeding
• Others

Automated milking and feeding are already things, so probably are not disruptive unless in nations where cattle-raising is still largely manual. Health monitoring and herd management we get we get – it's wearables on the hoof, a nice change but perhaps not revolutionary.

And “mating management”?

Nirmal reckons connected cows and other down-on-the-farm tech represents “a fresh and solid opportunity for service providers, equipment manufacturers, software vendors, value investors and stakeholders."

Fujitsu's already there with a big-data-driven offering that figures out when cows go into oestrus, the better to artificially inseminate them to increase herd yields. Cows commence oestrus at night and a day or two beforehand become rather more mobile. A pedometer, wireless comms and some cloudy analytics later, farmers know when it's time to get some sperm out of the deep freeze and open that big new packet of rubber gloves.

Microsoft's also beefing up its connected cow cred: it already has a case study, again with wearables and cloud.

Mooove along then, nothing to see here: just familiar tech being used to follow the herd. ®