Cattle identification: the history of nose prints approach in brief

Abstract

Petersen was the first published paper to address cattle biometrics and identification problem by suggesting a permanent cattle identification method based on nose print principles widely accepted today. His major concern was on proper identification of cattle for registration and of cattle on an official test so that the possibility of swapping, false insurance claims, and ownership disputes can be guarded against. It was with this identification problem in the mind of every breeder that the practicable suggestion of using nose print as means of identification was made by O. H. Baker of the American Jersey Cattle Club in Petersen’s paper entitled “The identification of the bovine by means of nose-prints”. Before the advent of the nose print method, cattle identification has been by conventional constructs such as tattoo, tags, photographs, descriptions, branding (hot and freeze), ear notching, and sketching (drawings) the color markings on them on paper for registration and identification purposes. These classical methods of identification cause trouble among the breeders especially when their cattle are sold or are on an official test due to lack of artistic ability on the part of the breeders which makes the matching of the sketches and the markings on the cattle disagree. Presented in this paper are the various cattle biometrics and identification methods, most especially from the classical methods to the modern methods.

Video-based cattle identification and action recognition

“…• It is challenging to identify similar animals from a larger herd on the field. Because the cows are all black and have similar size in our experiment, cow identification based on body patterns [4] or nose print [3] cannot be used. Furthermore, cow identification based on rearview and body movements [5] cannot be applied to uncontrolled environment on the field.…”

“…However this work does not identify individual cows and their subtle behaviours such as drinking versus grazing, so it is difficult to know which cow is doing what. Existing approaches to identify individual cows includes using nose patterns [3] or body patterns [4] or rear-view videos [5], however these require a well-control environment and/or close-up image capture that are difficult to set up in the field. To reduce the complexity and cost of cattle behaviour recognition, motion sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes associated with cattle IDs [6] have been used but these lack behaviour annotation.…”

Estrus Detection and Dairy Cow Identification with Cascade Deep Learning for Augmented Reality-Ready Livestock Farming

“…These systems are suitable for indoor facilities and are typically associated with static infrastructure, such as milking, feeding, or watering units. However, innovative identification methods, such as image-based pattern/spot [ 13 , 14 , 15 ], nose prints [ 16 , 17 ], or head/face recognition systems [ 18 ], have emerged as alternatives to traditional systems. These new systems can provide more precise, cost-effective, and efficient monitoring and management of cows, and they are also suitable for deployment in mobile setups.…”

Enhanced Mask R-CNN for herd segmentation

“…Proper monitoring of individual cows in such an arrangement can assist in the early detection of any abnormality and thereby preventing bad occurrences [2] . In recent years, different researchers have applied many and different state-of-the-art methods in monitoring the activities of cattle, namely radio-frequency identification method, biometrics identification method, sensor identification method, and computer vision identification method [3] .…”