Halter: Bringing humans and cows closer through technology

Where it all began

Halter began with founder and CEO Craig Piggott. Growing up on a farm in the Waikato, Craig loved being outdoors and helping out his parents. His parents always encouraged him to get creative, this allowed Craig to fail and get back up every time — building a strong worker and innovator in the process.

When leaving high school, Craig was unsure about moving to Auckland to study but made the decision to enrol at Auckland University to study mechanical engineering.

With a degree in his back pocket, Craig got a job with Rocket Lab as an engineer.

Of his experiences at Rocket Lab, Craig says, “It was like this little window into a venture-backed company where someone's raised money. They were going through enormous growth and doubling staff every year.

"For me that was this realisation that you could raise money on a vision. You could hire a team of incredible people. And when you're in that environment, you can achieve massive amounts.”

While working at Rocket Lab Craig noticed a quiet spot in dairy farming innovation; it was all based on old tech. Farmers are working long hours and suffering through a large chunk of manual labour. Craig says, “when you're working on a farm, you're doing 100-hour weeks.”

“Then you come to university and you see this other world and think, well, actually, there are other ways to do things. It doesn't have to be a ridiculous workload.”

Craig thought why not reduce the farmer’s stress and make dairy farming more sustainable. That’s when the GPS collar was invented.

Technology and hardware development

It started as an idea, and there were many rounds of testing and adjusting. Craig says, “We wondered, can you call on a cow and try and capture their responses?”

The highest risk was understanding the cow’s behaviour and training that animal to respond. The thing that makes the training possible is a device that outputs a very consistent and repeatable sound to train the cows more easily.

The collar needed to live on the cow long-term for training to occur and for Halter to determine if it was going to be successful in the majority of the herd. It had to convert what humans already knew about the cow’s responses into simple cues. It's like your microwave beeping. We equate that specific sound with our food being done and we hop up from what we are doing to get it. The same goes for cows; they hear one sound from the collar and know exactly how to react.

After around 10 months of testing, Halter could confidently say that a cow was able to respond to a cue. This involved a lot of prototyping hardware and hard work.

Now Craig was getting excited. He applied for funding, got approved, and started building his team in 2017. They grew to a team of six and haven’t stopped growing since thanks to the success of the GPS collars.

How does it work?

The collars use sound and vibration that the cow learns as 'keep moving' or 'stop moving'. A small, speaker-like tech piece inside the collar sits behind the cow’s ears. Sound and vibration, also known as cues, train the cows to stay within a virtual boundary, or walk to the milk shed.

Craig says, “We also use vibration as a positive reinforcement. We try and signify when they're facing the right direction or doing the right thing. And that is very much like how a horse rider will squeeze a horse to signal the behaviour they want.”

This tech combined with consistent cues means the cows learn habits and automatic responses, like humans. Cows are herd animals, so if you get half the cows to complete the task the rest will likely follow.

The GPS comes into play if the cow needs to walk towards the milking facilities or it needs to move to a new paddock. Based on which direction the cow needs to move to, cues are given to direct the cow that way.

This GPS technology means farmers are now beginning to use virtual fencing. This means more reliable, and sustainable use of land.

Craig says, “A farmer draws on the map on their phone, and you can see the cows. They draw a zone or break as we would call it within an existing paddock. That gets converted into GPS points.

“The collar will establish where those points are relative to the cow. The collar is always checking, how far away am I from a virtual boundary?”

As a cow moves closer to a boundary the collars are assessing direction, heading, and other inputs. If a cow is moving towards a virtual fence she will hear a sound cue to stop.

How can you create something like this?

Craig’s piece of advice for all kids is to be more outrageous with your own thinking. Don’t be constrained by what your teachers tell you, or what your parents tell you. Keep innovating and making new things, all ideas are worth exploring. If you have an idea that seems a little out of this world, make sure to keep fighting and developing your idea. You never know when it could become the next big innovation!