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July 21, 2005 NDSU Researchers Work On High-frequency Ear Tags North Dakota State University researches are working to convert technology that tracks retail store inventory to trace cattle. They are using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that Alien Technology in Fargo developed for stores such as Wal-Mart. “Alien Technology’s RFID tags work extremely well for their intended applications, such as identifying crates in warehouses,” says Jacob Glower, an associate professor in NDSU’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. “We’re interested in extending their application to cattle.” Glower is a member of the research team of about 20 people at NDSU and NDSU’s Dickinson Research Extension Center who are working on the RFID cattle tag project. The team’s effort to create a high-frequency ear tag for cattle is part of a national initiative to combat disease outbreaks in livestock. If an outbreak occurs, the tag will help show where a particular cow has been since birth. However, health security isn’t the only use for radio frequency ear tags, according to Kris Ringwall, director of the Dickinson Research Extension Center. He says the tags also can help producers monitor their herd’s performance and alert them to animals that aren’t contributing to the cattle operation’s bottom dollar. The researchers are testing the high-frequency tags at the center. They began the testing in July 2004. “I think the thing that I really appreciate is the fact that North Dakota is the lead in this technology,” says Mick Riesinger, a research specialist at the center. “We’re very much in the forefront in the livestock industry in developing architecture for identification for livestock, both cattle and equine.” The idea is to assign each animal an identification number that will go on the ear tag. That number will be stored in a national database. NDSU researchers are trying to come up with a high-frequency tag because the industry standard, a low-frequency tag, can’t be more than 5 inches from the scanner to work. That means the tags must be scanned one at a time. “If you have to do 5,000, 10,000 cows a day, that’s somewhat inconvenient,” Glower says. He and the others on the research team want to create a high-frequency tag that antennas can read from up to 20 feet away as cattle run past them. He says one of the obstacles they need to overcome is that the current technology was designed to be used on cardboard boxes in a dry place, while cattle are living creatures in anything but a dry environment. Researchers also discovered that the antennas can’t read a tag when one animal ducks under another, or when dung gets onto a tag, but they’re optimistic they’ll come up with a tag that works. Glower says their best test result was 143 of 143 animals detected as they ran through a cattle chute. The antenna was about 7 feet away. In another test, the best result was the antenna detecting 131 of 132 animals as they ran through a gate with the antenna 10 feet overhead. ### Source:
Jacob Glower, (701) 231-8068, jacob.glower@ndsu.edu
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