Imagine cows roaming freely in a barn equipped with cameras and sensors linked to artificial intelligence in a system that predicts their mood and lifespan. Implementing such a system is the mission of the new Research and Innovation Chair in Animal Welfare and Artificial Intelligence (WELL-E), created jointly by McGill University and UQAM thanks to $5 million in funding over five years.
“It’s a live digital laboratory that will work with producers to give them new tools,” says Elsa Vasseur, Associate Professor in the Department of Animal Science at McGill University. She is co-holder of the chair, which will receive technical and financial support from several partners, including Les Producteurs de lait du Québec (PLQ) and the Lactanet dairy herd improvement centre, as well as the Novalait consortium of Quebec milk producers and processors.
Happier, healthier cows, more profitable farms
It takes two years for cows to reach maturity and produce milk — or an average of three years in Canada — which gives farms very little time to turn a profit. The goal of the WELL-E Chair is to make the lives of farmers simpler by improving the longevity of dairy herds and helping them to identify the animals that are the least prone to disease and injury.
“Producers need their cows to be productive, but also to be happy and healthy for as long as possible. The three are linked,” explains the animal welfare specialist whose previous work strongly influenced the overhaul of the Canadian dairy industry’s code of practice in 2023. The updated code recommends increasing opportunities for movement for cattle by allowing them to roam freely in areas set up in a cowshed, or in outdoor exercise areas.
The major aim of the new chair will be to combine remote sensing by cameras and sensors with megadata and artificial intelligence. The approach is unique in that it brings together Vasseur’s expertise in assessing animal behaviour and well-being with that of her co-chair, Abdoulaye Baniré Diallo, a professor in UQAM’s computer science department who works on new artificial intelligence technologies.
Training the next generation of interdisciplinary specialists
The goal of the project is to structure the collection, storage, transfer, analysis and presentation of data in the barn so that farmers can make use of it. “The idea is to detect early signs of physical and mental health that are not visible to the naked eye, but which could be detrimental to the well-being and longevity of cattle, and to help farmers anticipate any problems that may arise.”
This large-scale project will include the input of some 50 graduate students and undergraduates from McGill and UQAM. “We will be introducing future computer scientists to the realities of livestock farming, while our animal science students will be able to explore data management and digital agriculture. In fact, we are training the next generation of interdisciplinary specialists.”
This chair also marks another first. In addition to contributions from the Dairy Farmers of Canada and Lactanet, a pan-Canadian network of milk recording and dairy production expertise, WELL-E receives support from the Dairy Farmers of Ontario. “Ontario producers had never invested in a Quebec initiative on this scale before,” says Vasseur. “We are positioning ourselves both nationally and internationally. There aren’t many research projects with this scope.”
McGill has long been a centre of dairy expertise
McGill University has always been committed to improving practices and yields in Quebec’s dairy industry. Its Macdonald campus in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue operates the last dairy farm on the island of Montreal and has won numerous awards of excellence. Since 1907, a wide range of research has been carried out here on topics ranging from feed and nutrition to poultry biosecurity and rural engineering.
One McGill researcher in particular, Professor John E. Moxley, was instrumental in modernizing Quebec’s dairy industry. In 1966, he set up a dairy herd analysis service that produced detailed reports on cow performance based on data collected on farms and computer-based infra-red milk analysis technology. It was a resounding success, evolving into Valacta, a centre of expertise in dairy production with its headquarters in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.
Valacta is now one of the three founding partners of the Canada-wide Lactanet network that will supply the WELL-E Chair with data. Valacta has hundreds of employees across Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, including at its head office in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. “Valacta still exists, even though we’ve taken on the Lactanet brand,” says Elsa Vasseur, who sits on Valacta’s board of directors as a representative of McGill University. “Valacta has its own funding and provides dairy expertise for all of Canada.”
Dairy producers in Montérégie to join project next year
The WELL-E Chair continues to bring in new players from Quebec’s dairy industry. So far, only the dairy farm on the Macdonald Campus has been involved. In a few months, the chair will also include a second cowshed in Ontario. In 2025, it will use the Université de Montréal campus network in Saint-Hyacinthe to ramp up operations by bringing on board some hundred producers in the Montérégie region.
“We need to get the commercial farms to participate as soon as possible, because we exist to make sure that knowledge is transferred quickly between the university and the community. That’s our vocation.”
Translation by Julie Barlow