Costa View Farms, located in Madera, Calif., first began employing RFID approximately ten years ago, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began investigating the technology to monitor poultry and livestock populations so it could more quickly and effectively trace animal diseases to the source in the event of a breakout. Although the USDA has not yet mandated the use of an animal-identification system, Costa View Farms has tagged more than 15,000 dairy cows with passive RFID transponders encoded with unique ID numbers. Learn how the identification system has saved the farm’s workers countless hours previously spent searching for and treating cows, while also improving its animal records and boosting milk production.
