On 2 June, the excellence project ‘AutoPasture - Digital applications for autonomous herd and pasture management of cattle’ will be launched with a festive kick-off event at the Research Institute of Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Dummerstorf.
In addition to the FBN, the project partners are the Neubrandenburg University of Applied Sciences, the University of Rostock, the Forschungsverbund M-V gGmbH and the Fraunhofer Institutes IGD and IGP as associated partners. Stralsund University of Applied Sciences is in charge of the project, which is coordinated by Prof Dr Mark Vehse. ‘This project combines the various competences of our partners to make the grazing of cattle more animal-friendly, efficient and sustainable through the use of digital technologies,’ explains Prof. Vehse.
AutoPasture should therefore represent benefit for the animals, nature and the farmers, who often have time and labour problems. It will address issues such as how strategic grazing can help to secure forage for as long as possible, promote biodiversity and control undesirable plant species; but also how animals can live together happier and healthier and be efficiently protected from predators. To this end, various technologies are being installed and, above all, data collected to create digital twins of the pastures and herds. Computer-aided scenarios for the cattle and grasslands will then be simulated using a large amount of data and predictions made for the expected reactions. The real-life laboratories, i.e. the three test areas, are to be a dairy cattle farm, a suckler cow farm and a water buffalo farm in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) is contributing its proven expertise in behavioural research and digital animal monitoring. With the help of intelligent systems, the behaviour of cattle is to be continuously recorded and analysed in order to detect stress reactions at an early stage and automatically evaluate animal welfare indicators.
"Our many years of research into the behavioural biology of farm animals make the FBN a strong partner in the AutoPasture project. We want to use digital behaviour monitoring methods to detect stress reactions at an early stage and develop objective animal welfare indicators - a decisive contribution to animal-friendly, data-based pasture management,’ says Dr Jan Langbein from the ’Animal Behaviour and Welfare" working group at the FBN.
The interdisciplinary research project is being funded by the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with around five million euros over four years as part of the state excellence programme ‘Application-oriented excellence research’.
Festive AutoPasture kick-off event
- Monday, 2 June 2025
- 1 to 3.15 p.m. in the official part
Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN)
Wilhelm-Stahl-Allee 2, 18196 Dummerstorf - Greetings from the university, FBN and the Ministry of Science, Culture, Federal and European Affairs M-V Speeches on the topics of animals, grassland, technology, big data and AI as well as utilisation and image data and the digital control room
