Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) has unveiled farm-twin, an open-source digital twin platform designed to improve dairy farm management through real-time data integration, predictive analytics and automated decision-making. Developed through funding from the Digital Dairy Chain, part of the SRUC-led UKRI Strength in Places programme, the technology aims to help dairy farmers improve animal health, milk productivity, operational efficiency and environmental sustainability.
The platform creates a virtual representation of a dairy farm by combining information from individual animals, farm infrastructure, sensors, telemetry systems and other digital technologies. By bringing these data streams together, farm-twin provides farmers with a unified view of farm operations and supports more informed management decisions.
Integrating Farm Data for Smarter Dairy Management
A key feature of farm-twin is its ability to integrate data from multiple technology providers into a single platform. Dairy farms often use separate systems to monitor milk production, animal health, feed intake and environmental conditions. When these systems operate independently, identifying relationships between different factors can be difficult.
Farm-twin addresses this challenge by consolidating information from different sources and presenting it through intuitive dashboards. Farmers can use these dashboards to monitor farm performance and identify potential problems more quickly.
According to Dr. Mazdak Salavati, Data Scientist at SRUC’s Dairy Research and Innovation Centre near Dumfries, combining information from different sources can reveal insights that individual systems may not provide independently. The platform collects data in near real time, enabling farmers to assess production trends alongside animal health and other operational indicators.
Predictive Analytics to Improve Animal Health
Early detection of illness is an important application of digital twin technology in dairy farming. Changes in milk yield, feed intake and animal behaviour can indicate potential health problems before they become more serious.
Farm-twin can combine milk production trends with live health data to identify warning signs and generate alerts. This approach may help farmers investigate emerging issues earlier, potentially reducing the impact of illness on milk production, animal welfare and farm profitability.
The platform also supports automated responses. For example, when a cow is flagged as potentially unwell, the system can trigger a shedding gate to isolate the animal while notifying the farmer and providing relevant information about the action.
Such capabilities demonstrate how connected farm technologies can support more responsive herd management. Automated actions, however, need appropriate configuration and human oversight to ensure that alerts are interpreted correctly and animal welfare remains a priority.
Optimising Feed, Resources and Environmental Performance
Beyond animal healthcare, farm-twin can support improvements in feeding strategies, resource allocation and environmental management.
By analysing feed intake alongside milk yield and animal health indicators, farmers may gain a clearer understanding of production efficiency and identify opportunities to improve feeding decisions. Better coordination of farm data can also help managers evaluate operational performance and make more effective use of available resources.
Environmental information adds another dimension to the platform. Integrating farm conditions with production and animal data can support more comprehensive assessments of the factors affecting herd performance and sustainability.
For dairy businesses, these capabilities are increasingly relevant as producers seek to balance productivity, animal welfare, operating costs and environmental responsibilities.
Open-Source Design Encourages Innovation
One of farm-twin’s defining characteristics is its open-source model. Users can download, use, modify and distribute the code, allowing developers and researchers to adapt the platform to different farming environments and technological requirements.
Dr. Matt Broadbent, Agri-tech Scientist at SRUC’s Dairy Research and Innovation Centre, highlighted the importance of open-source technology in improving transparency, encouraging innovation and reducing barriers to adoption.
The platform is also designed to accommodate farms of different sizes and technology configurations. Its backward compatibility allows historical information from legacy systems to be imported, helping farms make use of existing data and infrastructure rather than necessarily replacing all their current systems.
Researchers and developers are encouraged to build adapters for additional technologies and customise the platform for specific operational needs. This flexibility could support collaboration across the agricultural technology sector and create opportunities for new digital services.
Digital Twins Could Shape the Future of Dairy Farming
Professor Wayne Powell, Principal and Chief Executive of SRUC, said innovations such as farm-twin could help position dairy production as a leader in sustainable, data-driven agriculture while supporting entrepreneurship, new markets and digital skills development.
The platform represents a step towards more connected and data-driven dairy management. By combining real-time monitoring, predictive analytics and potential automation in one system, farm-twin could help farmers identify problems earlier, improve resource use and make better-informed decisions.
Its broader impact will depend on practical adoption, reliable data integration and the ability of farms to translate digital insights into measurable improvements. Nevertheless, the open-source approach offers a promising foundation for collaboration and innovation across the global dairy industry.