Well Cow secures TSB Feasibility Grant.

Over 120 UK businesses and 20 research institutions will collaborate in over 40 projects which were funded in the £18 million TSB collaborative research and development competition. The feasibility competition, aimed at micro and small businesses, funded over 80 projects with grants of up to £25,000. Well Cow were delighted to be one of the successful SMEs.

The Well Cow bolus monitors rumen pH to assist in the nutritional management of cattle, which improves both productivity and the animals health and welfare. In order to ease the process of data collection, Well Cow now wants to explore if it is possible to utilise a 'communication bridge', which combines the use of a collar to collect the data from its longlife wireless pH bolus, which sits in the rumen, with a wide area network so that the data can be captured and analysed on a smart device such as a smartphone or tablet computer.  The challenge in this feasibility study is to enable a ultra low power device, the pH bolus, to access the enormous computing power and wide area networking capability of the mobile phone to provide seamless remote data acquisition - bringing the latest in communication data collection into the farm.