A farmer in New Zealand lost all of the breeding data on his cows, resulting in him having no way to reliably track which cows to match with the right bull.
Aside from wanting to prevent an issue like inbreeding that could affect the health of their herd, farmers will go out of their way to try and breed cows in a way that promotes the genes they want.
One New Zealander put all of his data into ChatGPT and had it sort the data for him, resulting in him realizing that AI could probably matchmake cows and figure out how to give farmers the genes they’re looking for.
Now one Matthew Zonderop has turned this process into an app that essentially works like Tinder for cows, finding the best matches for each farmer’s herd of cattle.
Tinder for dairy cows is a real & useful app
When it comes to being a farmer in a small country like New Zealand, maintaining genetic diversity is an absolute must. While it’s still important in huge countries like the U.S., it’s much easier to just grab some cows from a different part of the continent to breed for the sort of traits you’d want in a cow.
New Zealand, meanwhile, is a small island nation that’s very far away from the rest of civilization. It’s at the point where dairy farmers will purposely import semen from overseas to try and strengthen their herd.
Perfect Cow Breeding Solutions does just that, making it easier for New Zealand dairy farmers to keep track of their cows and figure out how to get the most out of their farm.
With a tagline like, “Every straw of semen should move your herd forward — we make sure it does,” the point of the app is pretty clear.
“Most cows throughout New Zealand are DNA profiled, and they give specific trait data on cows, so her protein levels, her fat levels, gestation length, live weight, and they are given to us into our herd records,” Zonderop explained to the Waikato Times.
“So each cow has got its own head record and we can extract that data and then analyze it.”
While it may not be nearly as romantic as the Tinder app humans would use, it’s undoubtedly a great tool to help New Zealand farmers (and perhaps other farmers in rural or hard-to-access areas) to keep their herd strong.
Content shared from www.dexerto.com.