Title: Design and implementation of an identification productivity recording and breeding system for the sheep industry

Authors: Sotirios Kontogiannis; Markos G. Tsipouras; George Kokkonis; Dimitrios Godas; Stavros Valsamidis

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, University of Ioannina, Greece ' Department of Business Administration, Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Grevena, 51100, Greece ' Department of Business Administration, Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Grevena, 51100, Greece ' Department of Business Administration, Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Grevena, 51100, Greece ' Department of Accounting, Technological Educational Institution of East Macedonia and Thrace, Ag. Silas, 65500 Kavala, Greece

Abstract: This paper presents a new system architecture and test-bed application implementation called sheep manager. Sheep manager system uses near field communication (NFC) technology and custom NFC data exchange format records for the identification and attributes recording of sheep inside a flock. Sheep manager system also utilises sensors for real-time measurements and recording of raw milk extraction per ewe. All recorded information are then stored into an application server following an HTTP representational state transfer protocol specification. The authors also propose an algorithm for sheep breed selection that uses feedback information from past successful breeds in order to increase herd milk productivity.

Keywords: information systems; data management systems; DMS; agriculture management systems; systems architecture; sheep management systems; sheep breed selection algorithm; embedded systems; cyber-physical systems; CPS; agriculture; sensors; actuators; NFC technology; near field communication; data exchange format; sheep identification; sheep attributes; milk extraction per ewe; sheep herds; herd milk productivity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2016.081983

International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics, 2016 Vol.2 No.2/3/4, pp.110 - 134

Received: 11 May 2016
Accepted: 07 Aug 2016
Published online: 31 Jan 2017 *

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