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A documentary team from Finland visited Dalhousie University’s Ruminant Animal Centre this week to film research led by Dr. Suresh Raja on dairy cow vocalizations, artificial intelligence and animal welfare.

The Mootrix film crew captured scenes from the pasture, barn and research environment, including sunrise filming with the dairy herd and demonstrations of how microphones, cameras and AI tools can be used to better understand cow behaviour and communication.

The Ruminant Animal Centre (RAC) was at the heart of the filming, offering the documentary team a real-world setting where animal care, research and daily farm life come together. Holly Hines and Jean Lynds were also interviewed for the documentary, adding valuable RAC perspectives on working with the herd and supporting research in a live farm environment.

Dr. Raja’s research group studies cow vocalizations not as simple “translations,” but as welfare-relevant clues that must be interpreted alongside behaviour, posture, movement, health, environment and social context. The work brings together animal science, computer vision, machine learning and digital agriculture to support earlier detection of welfare changes and improve human attention to animals.

“The goal is not to make cows speak like humans,” says Dr. Raja. “The goal is to help humans listen better.”

The documentary also highlights the role of students in developing next-generation tools for precision livestock farming, including acoustic monitoring, social network analysis and digital twin approaches for dairy systems.

As Dr. Raja puts it, “A microphone can capture a call. A camera can capture movement. AI can detect a pattern. But care still belongs to people.”