Rethinking Wearable Technology in Dairy Cows: Challenges and Prospects for Smart Collars

The increasing global demand for animal-derived products, alongside concerns about sustainability and animal welfare, has accelerated the adoption of Precision Livestock Farming sensories. Among these, smart collars for dairy cows represent a key innovation, offering continuous, objective monitoring of animal behaviour. Despite their advantages, such as early disease detection and support for preventive management aligned with One Health principles, significant limitations persist. Current devices suffer from poor multisensory integration, limited interoperability, energy inefficiency, and high operational costs, especially for small to medium farms. This editorial critically examines the technological and functional gaps of existing solutions, advocating for a paradigm shift towards modular, interconnected, user-centered smart collars. Achieving this transformation requires a transdisciplinary effort to ensure that future wearable technologies fully meet the biological, operational, and ethical demands of modern dairy farming.