UNITED STATES-NEW CATTLE IMPLANTS.
Digital Angel of South St. Paul introduced its latest animal-identification system at the 2009 Annual Cattle Industry Convention and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) Trade Show last week in Phoenix.
Digital Angel’s new r.Tag system is a flexible active radio frequency identification (RFID) tag technology that allows automatic collection of identification and data in correlation with specific locations. The transponder r.Tags can be read at distances of as great as 100 feet, and when coupled with the system’s r.Tag position indicators, an animal’s location can be established to within a few feet.
The company’s tests show that an entire truckload of cattle can be read and identified accurately while the vehicle passes by a single reader. It also qualifies for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s country-of-origin labeling requirement.
In addition to active RFID technology, solar-powered backup scanner batteries and wireless connectivity, the r.Tag system features high-frequency 2.4 GHz operation for long-range reading; the ability to manage high throughput rates for processing animals in the commercial environment, including the latest anticollision software for reading cattle moving in herds as opposed to single-file; remote read/write capability; interactive communication via the Internet for optimal information management and large memory capacity for data storage on the animal’s tag or in databases.
The r.Tag system was developed by Geissler Technologies, which Digital Angel acquired in January 2008. The system has been field-tested for 18 months in a broad range of environments, including 20-below-zero Minnesota winters.