Advances in Precision Livestock Management for Grazing Ruminant Systems

Precision livestock management can be defined as a set of practices and tools that aim at providing more precise and continuous monitoring of aspects related to animal health, welfare, production, and reproductive efficiency, as well as environmental impacts in social-ecological systems. Maintaining this level of monitoring can be challenging, especially in grazing ruminant livestock systems, given inherent aspects of these production systems, which are often extensive in spatial scale, incorporating substantial resource heterogeneity due to differences in elevation, soils, plant communities, topography, and inherently variable spatiotemporal precipitation. Rapid advances in technologies are facilitating more applications of precision livestock management by producers through increased access and reduced costs of sensors to detect and monitor animal movements and physiological status and stress levels, rumination patterns, feed intake, and greenhouse gas emissions. Similar to the substantial changes that technology has brought to precision crop management over the past two decades, the technology transformation is emerging for extensive livestock production systems with ruminant grazing animals. Application of precision livestock management to these extensive systems will incorporate numerous technologies, often in combination, that are intended to increase production efficiency of operations while also presenting potential to mitigate environmental impacts to achieve sustainable intensification of production systems. The growing interest in precision livestock management tools by producers and land managers has generated substantial global research interest in this area, especially for extensive livestock production systems with ruminant grazing animals.

This research topic aims to gather and present new studies addressing the utilization of precision livestock management in grazing ruminant production systems. The main objectives include exploring specific questions related to the effectiveness of these technologies in improving animal health, welfare, and production efficiency, as well as their potential to mitigate environmental impacts. Hypotheses to be tested may involve the accuracy and reliability of various sensors and monitoring tools, the economic viability of implementing these technologies on a large scale, and the overall impact on sustainable livestock production.

To gather further insights in the application and evaluation of precision livestock management tools and practices in extensive grazing systems, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

- Virtual fencing and other technologies used for geolocation, controlling movement, and grazing behaviors of grazing animals in extensive production systems.
- Individual and collective on-animal sensors for monitoring animal health/stress, physiology, welfare, and behavioral activities such as grazing, resting, and rumination.
- Equipment and laboratory techniques used for measuring and estimating feed intake and greenhouse gas emissions from grazing animals.

Submissions of research articles as well as literature reviews are welcome and encouraged. Manuscripts should be restricted to domestic ruminant livestock species where animals spend most or all of their productive lives on grazing systems.