At Friars Moor Livestock Health, we’ve always believed that technology should support better decision-making on farm, not replace the experience and judgement that comes from working with cattle every day.
As part of our Innovate UK ADOPT funded project, Unlocking Dairy Potential: Gene Expression and Environmental Management in Practice, we’ve now reached an exciting milestone. Following the completion of sampling and analysis, all participating farms have received their first gene expression reports and recommendations. The focus is now shifting from data collection to understanding how these findings can be used to support practical herd health improvements.
One of the most common questions surrounding any new technology is simple: does it tell us anything useful that we don’t already know?
So far, the early signs are encouraging. The gene expression analysis has highlighted a number of biological themes across participating farms, allowing us to look beneath the surface of traditional performance metrics and explore how cows are responding to their environment, nutrition and management.
What’s been particularly interesting is how closely some of the findings have aligned with issues already being identified through routine veterinary work. At Leweston Farm, for example, increasing mastitis incidence had already become an area of concern. Encouragingly, the analysis highlighted Immunity & Inflammation as a key priority area. While this doesn’t provide all the answers, it demonstrates that the technology is identifying biological signals that correspond with real-world herd health observations, which is exactly the sort of relationship we hoped to explore through the project.
One of the most valuable lessons from the project so far has been the role that veterinary expertise plays in interpreting AI-generated insights.
The technology is capable of analysing vast amounts of biological information and identifying patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. But understanding what those findings mean within the context of an individual farm remains critical.
As practising farm vets, we’re able to compare these outputs against health records, fertility trends, disease challenges, management practices and our own knowledge of each herd. In many cases, the findings reinforce observations already being made on farm, giving us confidence that the technology is identifying meaningful biological signals rather than simply generating interesting data.
Rather than producing another report, what matters is using those insights to ask better questions: could underlying immune pressures be contributing to disease challenges? Are there management factors influencing performance that aren’t immediately visible through traditional herd records?
By combining advanced biological analysis with veterinary knowledge and practical farm experience, we can help farmers focus attention on the areas most likely to make a genuine difference to herd health, welfare and productivity.
As with many innovative technologies, the reports contain a long list of recommendations and potential areas for investigation. The challenge is deciding where to start.
For this reason, the project team has been working with participating farms to prioritise recommendations based on practicality, likely impact and relevance to current herd challenges. Rather than attempting to tackle every suggestion at once, the aim is to identify manageable actions that can be implemented and monitored over time.
At Longmoor Farm, this process has helped identify several priority areas for further investigation, including vitamin and mineral status, nutritional evaluation of the milking cow ration and assessment of the silage being fed to calves. Alongside these investigations, the farm has agreed a number of key performance indicators to monitor throughout the project, including milk yield, somatic cell counts and involuntary cull rates.
By combining biological insights with practical farm objectives, we can focus attention on a small number of measurable actions and assess whether interventions are actually moving the needle on herd health and productivity. This process of questioning, investigating and prioritising is where the technology will earn its keep.
Artificial intelligence is appearing in almost every industry, and farming and agriculture are no exception.
As datasets become more complex and biological information becomes more accessible, there will be an increasing need for trusted advisers who can bridge the gap between technology and practical farm management. Veterinary practices are uniquely placed to fulfil this role. We understand animal health, production systems, farm economics and the realities of implementing change on commercial livestock farms. Our job is to help translate complex information into meaningful decisions, and the ADOPT project is giving us the chance to explore what that future might look like.
The next phase of the project will focus on implementing and monitoring priority actions across the participating farms. Over time, we’ll be able to assess whether the recommendations generated through gene expression analysis lead to measurable improvements in herd health and performance.
Perhaps most importantly, we’ll continue evaluating whether this technology can provide information that’s genuinely useful to farmers and their advisers. As an independent veterinary practice, that remains our primary interest.
We look forward to sharing further updates as the project progresses, and to continuing the conversation around how emerging technologies can support the future of dairy herd health management.
