P6: Future Systems – Dairy Da.T.A
Dairy UP’s P6 project is exploring ways to use existing farm, climate and industry data to develop ways to monitor cows and systems to help farmers make better decisions, for example about heat management, health and feeding. One aim is to support animal and environmentally friendly intensification.
Dairy UP’s P6 project involves three areas of work:
P6 is a suite of three projects that combine animal science and data science. Each project is being undertaken by a PhD student.
- P6a: Resilient cattle (heat tolerance): optimising on-farm energy use and cooling systems.
- P6b: Resilient cattle (health): early intervention for improved animal health, enabled by advanced sensing.
- P6c: Digital feeding – data-driven feeding to optimise grain allocation in pasture-based herds.
Progress
Final Project Summary P6a (May 2026)
Resilient Cattle (Heat Tolerance) project investigated how sensor technology, climate data and artificial intelligence can improve the identification and breeding of dairy cattle that are more resilient to heat stress.
Final Project Summary P6b (May 2026)
Resilient Cattle (Health) project explored how sensor data and farm records can be combined to better understand dairy cattle health and support the development of early-intervention tools.
Final Project Summary P6c (May 2026)
Digital Feeding project explored how artificial intelligence and machine learning can optimise grain allocation for individual dairy cows using existing farm data.
Publication P6c - Artif. Intell. Agric. (April 2026)
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Evolutionary Algorithms for Optimising Cow Supplementation and Milk Production
Publication P6a - Smart Agric. Technol (September 2025)
An AI-based hybrid model for dairy cattle heat tolerance phenotype
Publication P6a - Comput. Electron. Agric. (April 2025)
The diversity in dairy cattle reticulorumen temperature: Identifying water intake events
Abstract - ADSA (June 2025)
AI for a dairy cattle heat tolerance phenotype.
Publication P6a - Animal (July 2024)
Review: Ruminant Heat-stress terminology
PhD Projects
P6 Lead/co-ordinator:
Cameron Clark
Prof Farming Systems | Deputy Director - Gulbali Institute for Agriculture, Water and Environment |Charles Sturt University
Project Team:
- Yani Garcia (Usyd)
- Ian Lean (Scibus)
- Jim Rothwell (NSW DPI)
- Peter Thompson (Usyd)
- Anna Chlingaryan (USyd)
- Maddison Pearce (USyd)
- Alice Shirley (USyd)