January 16, 2025

Canadian-based HerdWhistle partners with Spanish robotic livestock farming firm to develop technology

Canadian-based precision-livestock company HerdWhistle Technologies Incorporated (HerdWhistle) is partnering with Touchless Animal Metrics (TAM), a Spanish robotic livestock farming and engineering company, to develop and market their combined precision farming technology.

This combination is focused on supporting swine producers to improve their performance and profitability. Such a combined solution will allow the pig sector to successfully meet the challenges it is facing, now and in the coming years, to ensure it satisfies increasing demand in a sustainable manner.

HerdWhistle chief executive officer Dr. Jack Behan said: "We are extremely pleased to announce the next stage of our journey with TAM and indeed excited to strengthen our partnership with Hendrix."

Dr. Behan added: "Hendrix Genetics have been strong supporters of both HerdWhistle and TAM technologies from the get-go, which not only required imagination to think outside of the box, but also investment in cash and kind, that takes real vision.

"HerdWhistle has an automated phenotypic multispectral imaging system to acquire data on pigs… TAM also has a significant tech stack including a track mounted robot, TAM-Bot, on which we can place our BigEye™ camera. This is a great opportunity to leverage our technology together. A single system per building mounted on the TAM-BOT will radically change the hardware start-up cost. This will be an exciting and rewarding collaboration for the swine industry globally."

TAM CEO Dr. Ivan Amat said: "Through this partnership, swine producers can benefit from a combined solution that brings two cutting-edge technologies into one.

"The food industry will see dramatic changes in the following years. We can now see robots taking over agriculture as digitalisation and subsequent AI deployment is unstoppable.

"Animals are living beings, and therefore, they grow, move, and interact in unexpected ways. All of this means that a huge technological effort is needed to be able to automatically understand and quantify what happens in a pen and how we can provide the necessary information to the producer to optimise the welfare, environmental impact, quality, and cost of the product that reaches our tables every day. Innovative solutions such as this initiative now provide the means to achieve these aims in a cost effective manner.

"Hendrix Genetics and Grupo Jorge as visionary companies were already really excited about these ideas seven years ago when we started to work with them. It is my pleasure to see how we (HW and TAM) are fully aligned to this endeavour... Our pork industry investors, including Hendrix, had the audacity to encourage us to join our efforts to bring excellence even further."

- Newsfile Corp.