Patent ID: 7721675

Claim:
A method for monitoring and identifying dairy animals, the method comprising the steps of: recognizing with a sensor the presence of dairy animals moving in a milking parlor comprising a number of milking stalls; assigning a number to each dairy animal, whereby the number corresponds to a stall in which the dairy animal will be milked; storing the number for each dairy animal in a process controller; conducting an identification step for each dairy animal with a sensor that interacts with an information storage device carried by the dairy animal to obtain identification data for that dairy animal; assigning the number and the identification data for each dairy animal to an information unit; making each information unit available at the stall in which the animal belonging to the information units is located; indicating stalls at which the information unit does not contain identification data; conducting a second identification step at the indicated stalls; and controlling a dairy operation in each stall corresponding to the identification data for the dairy animal in the stall.