Effectiveness of optical, digital and hybrid zoom equipped drones for use in reading livestock ear tags for individual animal identification.

Predicting how advertised zoom capabilities of commercially available drones being deployed for animal management will perform can be difficult, as promotional and marketing materials supplied by the manufacturer do not necessarily reflect real world performance. We compared our ability to read livestock ear tags used for individual animal identification using various drone models with differing zoom capabilities. Drone models were assessed at various distances using a veterinary bovine head model to determine their ability to read livestock ear tags of various colors and sizes, and to establish observational distance limits. Results indicate that while drones that primarily utilize optical zoom are preferable, newer model drones equipped with hybrid zoom cameras that utilize computational photography are superior to five-year-old drone models equipped with only digital zoom cameras. Recently released drone models are now capable of reading livestock ear tags at distances exceeding sixty meters and perform equivalent to binoculars in terms of discerning numbers printed on various colored livestock ear tags.