Never miss a calving with Moocall

Moocall Calving Sensors, developed in Ireland and available in Australia and New Zealand, are easily applied to a cow’s tail and can accurately predict when it will give birth.

It does this by measuring tail movement patterns triggered by labour contractions. When they reach a certain level of intensity over a period of time it sends an SMS text alert to a cellphone one hour prior to calving.

After calving, the sensor can be moved to the next cow. It is adjustable to any size tail.

The device was launched in 2015. Since then 23,000 sensors have been sold in 38 countries. And this growth looks likely to accelerate: Moocall has been chosen for the Pearse Lyons Global Agritech Accelerator scheme run by biotech company Alltech, this year.

Moocall was one of 10 companies selected from 183 applicants (from 38 countries) to join the scheme; it was pitched to an audience of 3000 at the Alltech One17 Ideas conference in Kentucky last month. It is the idea of Alltech founder and president Dr Pearse Lyons and was open to start-ups now funded and ready to go to market.

Moocall co-founder Emmett Savage says the resources and expertise made available via the Accelerator scheme helped grow and develop his company.

“The Accelerator has been massive for Moocall as a business, and for me personally,” he said. “The tutoring, training, pitch coaching and opening up a world of contacts helped spread Moocall around the world.”

Moocall and the other successful applicants took part in a 15-week mentorship programme aimed at accelerating their business development. They now have access to Dr Lyons and other senior executives of Alltech which has a presence in 129 countries.

Alltech chief innovation officer Aidan Connolly said, “[These businesses] want access to our footprint, our market knowledge and our contacts.

“We have a strong network of people we can bring in who may be potential customers, distributors and even investors in these start-ups,” he said.