The New Era of Smart Animal Husbandry Arrives: Internet Plus Helps Drive the Development of Animal Husbandry

If we were to rank this year's hottest buzzwords, “Internet Plus” would definitely make the list. Indeed, the moment the “Internet Plus” concept appeared it drew great attention from society, and every industry is actively exploring the possibility of achieving the best integration with “Internet Plus.” Naturally, people in animal husbandry are not willing to lag behind either, and among them is New Hope Dairy, which has been rolling out a series of big moves.

Not long ago, New Hope Dairy's activity “Why Not Send Milk and Have a Willful New Year,” held using “Internet Plus” thinking, won it nearly 90,000 followers and achieved a good market response. Now the group is building on that momentum and recently held a themed forum on “How Traditional Enterprises Can Do Internet Plus,” revealing that it will soon recruit a limited number of “urban ranch owners” to adopt cows online and take part in ranch construction. This is also the first time since New Hope Dairy launched the world's first Internet milk, “Cloud Ranch,” in October last year that the idea of “Internet cow farming” has been turned into reality and gradually brought to market.

What is “Internet cow farming” all about? Actually, it is not hard to understand; we can compare it to a “live broadcast.” From a thousand miles away, you only need to turn on your phone to watch the real-time situation at “Cloud Ranch” with one tap; in the mobile game you can adopt a star cow, experience the cow-feeding process, and learn about the production and processing of dairy products; “urban ranch owners” can also take part in ranch construction, drink milk from their own cows, and give their own milk to friends……

However, “Internet cow farming” is, after all, a new thing. Can it have room to survive and develop? Actually, there is no need to worry at all. Today, as food safety issues receive increasing attention, we have begun to develop a new understanding of “eating” based on “seeing is believing,” and “Internet Plus” happens to fit our needs. In my view, “Internet Plus” represents an open and candid attitude; it can better achieve open and transparent information, put an end to fraud and falsification, return the right to know to the public, and achieve the goal of putting people first.

If a certain animal husbandry enterprise can guarantee that consumers can log in to its online platform and watch in real time, or book an on-site visit to its farm and processing line, then what reason would consumers have not to buy that enterprise's livestock and poultry products? This is exactly the fundamental essence of traditional animal husbandry crossing over to “smart animal husbandry.” First, by making the entire industry chain visible, it enhances consumers' awareness of and trust in livestock and poultry products; second, consumers' immersive experience can in turn influence production at the front end, so that product development and utilization can be positioned more precisely; and third, because consumers take part in it, they “fall in love” with animal husbandry and promote it as their own cause, spreading it widely through friend circles on the Internet. In this way, the circular integration of “Internet Plus” and animal husbandry is ultimately completed intelligently.

In addition, “Internet Plus” can also bring some new technological revolutions to animal husbandry. For example, “Internet Plus” can better enable automatic feed feeding systems to optimize and regulate the feeding time and feeding amount for livestock and poultry based on information such as their growth cycle and feeding conditions; it can better enable livestock and poultry disease diagnosis and prevention and control systems to rely on visual equipment installed in pens to transmit information such as illness and epidemic conditions, so as to provide first-hand materials for experts to diagnose and treat; and it can better enable livestock and poultry breeding environment monitoring systems to monitor parameters such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ammonia in the breeding environment in real time, thereby vigorously developing ecological livestock and poultry breeding and achieving rapid, healthy, and sustainable development of animal husbandry. There are many such examples, too numerous to mention one by one.

It is worth noting that although “Internet Plus” can bring enormous changes to animal husbandry, we cannot treat it as a fad or hype and casually “plus” it, or even “plus” it recklessly. In my view, people in animal husbandry should base themselves on reality, understand “Internet Plus” more deeply and thoroughly, use the “plus” to give fuller play to their own advantages, and also use the “plus” of others' advantages to supplement and improve themselves.

In summary, “Internet Plus” can both guide animal husbandry practitioners and consumers to become clearer-headed and more rational, and make the entire industry more intelligent. Therefore, we can say without exaggeration that “Internet Plus” is about to open a new era of “smart animal husbandry.”