A farmer in New Zealand has developed an app that matches cows like on Tinder. What started as an experiment is now a tool that helps farmers across the country with breeding.
How did the idea come about? The Radio New Zealand reports that Matthew Zonderop, a dairy farmer in the Waikato region, used multiple spreadsheets and his own code for years to manage his herd of cows. This allowed him to keep track of which cows should be paired with which bulls to avoid inbreeding and promote desired traits.
However, one day a bug in the code caused the entire system to fail, and the carefully maintained breeding data became unusable. Zonderop turned to ChatGPT to fix the problem. When the AI corrected the error and he uploaded his data, he came up with the idea that ChatGPT could not only repair code but also suggest perfect breeding pairings.
From this thought, he initially developed an internal tool for his own operation. When he realized how much time and work it saved him, he, together with partners, developed a fully-fledged app – Perfect Cow Breeding Solutions. An app that helps cows find their suitable match.
Speaking of modern agriculture, in Farming Simulator 25 you can let loose on the virtual farm. Here you can watch the trailer.
How data and pastures intersect
How does the app work? Almost all dairy cows in New Zealand are DNA profiled. According to Radio New Zealand, the app accesses the monthly updated RAS list (ranking of active breeding bulls) featuring around 27,000 bulls. It analyzes genetic profiles, health parameters, and production data of the cows, including fat and protein content, gestation period, body weight, or fertility and finds the best bulls for each animal.
“Every straw of semen should advance your herd, and we ensure that it does,” is the slogan. According to Zonderop, it now takes less than 40 seconds to find suitable partners for 400 cows, something that used to take weeks. Thus, farmers can not only breed specifically for performance traits but also set special goals.
Why is the app so important? In large countries like the USA, farmers can easily obtain breeding animals from far-off regions to ensure genetic diversity. New Zealand, on the other hand, is a remote island nation with a limited livestock population.
Therefore, farmers must plan carefully, often importing even semen from bulls from abroad to introduce fresh genetic material. An app that automates and optimizes this planning saves time, reduces errors, and prevents costly mismatings.
What does the future hold for the app? According to Rural News Group, Perfect Cow Breeding Solutions is a commercial service with a subscription model. Zonderop himself pays monthly for the AI usage and charges his customers a fee for data entry and bull selection.
So far, the service primarily targets New Zealand dairy farmers, but the idea could also be interesting in other regions with restricted breeding choices, such as remote islands or very isolated breeding areas.
Cows and unusual stories seem to go hand in hand. While in New Zealand an app digitizes the love lives of the animals, elsewhere a curious experiment draws attention: Researchers throw a cow into deep water and encounter sea creatures that technically shouldn’t exist.
