Current approaches in livestock geotagging: Assessing available technologies and applications to public health research in Kenya and Malawi

Livestock geotrackers are increasingly used for public health research, particularly within the field of One Health, to draw inference on pathogen exposure and human risk from livestock movement data. There are many dozens, if not hundreds, of devices available to researchers, including devices purpose built for livestock such as collars, ear tags, rumen boluses (placed in the forestomach of a ruminant), or other formats; those intended for wildlife but suitable for livestock; and devices intended for other geotracking applications which can be retrofitted for livestock. To assist other researchers in navigating the wealth of available options, we present here our experiences with six devices—four intended for livestock, one intended for wildlife, and one intended for humans— applied to cattle, camels, sheep, goats, and donkeys in rural locations in Eastern and Southern Africa. We summarize the technical specifications and features of these devices, our deployment strategies, and our experiences in terms of battery life, durability, data quality and retrieval, and acceptability by livestock owners. We found that both FindMy and CatLog2 performed well and were cost-effective at under $250 per unit. While FindMy is more costly than CatLog2, this device transmits signal, allowing users to track device locations from an app or browser. Our results support other One Health researchers weighing the hundreds of options for livestock geotracking available to them, considering their project’s context, objectives, and available resources.