701x: Connected Intelligence for Cattle Management

The cattle industry holds significant economic importance, particularly with beef cattle, which often command higher prices than other meats due to their meat quality and market demand. Beef cattle contribute substantially to global food supply, providing essential protein. Prices for beef cattle can vary significantly based on breed, age, weight, health, market conditions, and even geographic location. On average, beef cattle prices can range upwards to over a thousand dollars per head, with prime beef breeds or specific high-quality animals fetching significantly more. This economic value supports livelihoods across the supply chain, including farmers, ranchers, meat processors, and distributors.

Risks Associated with Cattle Assets:

Cattle farmers face several risks that can impact their profitability and asset value:

• Sickness: Disease outbreaks can devastate herds, leading to financial losses from treatment costs, reduced productivity, and mortality.
• Loss: Cattle can be lost due to theft, predators, or simply straying and getting lost, particularly in large, remote grazing areas.
• Other Risks: Additional risks include natural disasters (floods, droughts, fires), market fluctuations, feed cost increases, and regulatory changes affecting livestock management.

Addressing these very challenges is where technological innovation becomes invaluable. Solutions like the 701x xTpro smart ear tag provide the means to proactively monitor cattle health and location, turning potential threats into manageable situations and offering farmers greater control and peace of mind.

Transforming Livestock Management with Satellite-Enabled Intelligence 

701x, a precision livestock technology company based in North Dakota, is revolutionizing the cattle industry with its xTpro smart tag—a game-changing tool that delivers real-time animal health, reproductive performance, and location insights through a rugged, compact device that is mounted on the ear of cattle itself. 

Partnering with  Skylo and KYOCERA AVX, 701x has unlocked a breakthrough in remote livestock management. The xTpro works beyond the limits of traditional cellular networks, opening new opportunities for remote livestock operations across the globe. This innovative collaboration has resulted in a device that is not only rugged and compact but also transformative, especially in areas with limited connectivity. 

This partnership has been instrumental in developing a robust, lightweight, and highly integrated device that is reshaping the future of the agriculture industry, where connectivity is sparse and every ounce of hardware counts. 

Customer Background: 701x 

Headquartered in North Dakota, 701x is known for solving legacy challenges in the beef supply chain using cutting-edge technologies like Edge AI and satellite connectivity to bring cattle ranching into the 21st century. With a product suite built for commercial producers, seedstock producers, and breed associations, 701x aims to deliver better data, faster decisions, and ultimately a more sustainable livestock industry. 

With their flagship xTpro smart ear tag, 701x enables 24/7 livestock monitoring without relying on cellular or Wi-Fi infrastructure — an essential capability in rural areas where such wireless infrastructure is often unavailable or cost prohibitive. 

The Challenge: Real-Time Cattle Tracking in Remote Environments 

Cellular operators and networks focus on where people are and where people go. Cattle producers often operate in vast, disconnected landscapes outside of major population centers where cellular coverage is inconsistent or non-existent. Traditional livestock monitoring systems are limited by this lack of connectivity, forcing producers to rely on inefficient observation and guesswork, instead of being able to leverage the power of big data. 

701x set out to solve this problem by building a smart ear tag capable of delivering reliable, real-time location, reproductive activity, and health data—at scale, from anywhere. But creating a satellite-connected, ultra-compact, and energy-efficient device small enough for an ear tag posed a significant engineering challenge.

The Solution: Skylo Satellite Connectivity and KYOCERA AVX Antenna Innovation 

To overcome the connectivity challenge, 701x integrated Skylo’s Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technology into the xTpro tag. Skylo’s global satellite network ensures reliable, low-power connectivity across even the most remote grazing land. 

A critical enabler of this innovation was the partnership with KYOCERA AVX, whose antenna design team played a hands-on role in supporting the xTpro’s development from concept to final qualification. Working closely with 701x’s engineering team, KYOCERA AVX delivered a fully customized, all-in-one antenna supporting LTE, GNSS, and NTN satellite bands—all packed into a small, lightweight form factor ideal for animal wearables.  

Tracking Livestock the Smarter Way: Lightweight, Solar-Powered, and Satellite-Ready

The 701x xTpro tag continually tracks livestock without extra equipment. This tag does not require manual pointing towards satellites to get a connection, a base station or antenna, moves when the livestock moves, and does not interfere with the livestock’s daily movements. Cattle are highly sensitive to any object hanging from their ear; as such, many off-the-shelf asset tracking solutions are too heavy to adopt to a suitable form factor. 701x spent a lot of time streamlining the proper weight for their tag. While there aren’t strict mass requirements, smaller is always better when it comes to animal-mounted tech! The xTpro tag is 51.5 grams, only about the weight of a large egg. This solution also had to be power-conscious. There is no guarantee that a cow will position itself with the solar cell in the sun every day. As such, the tag needed to optimize power management, so that the tag would still be operational over a long period of time even with minimal charging. 

At 60mm wide, 185mm tall, 25mm thick unfolded (about the size of a sunglass case), this tag is not only small, light, and compact, but it also has an an intelligent feature-backoff scheme, that can provide useful information and data for many days, despite weather conditions. This form factor includes a 250 mw solar panel and battery, which means that the tag would need to be in total darkness for more than one month before going into a dormant state awaiting charge. 

The Impact: Scalable, Satellite-Connected Livestock Intelligence 

The integration of Skylo connectivity and KYOCERA AVX’s customized antenna has unlocked new levels of scalability and reliability for 701x and ranchers globally. With the xTpro tag now Skylo-certified, producers can monitor livestock in real time—anywhere there is access to open sky. 

The benefits are clear: smarter ranching, reduced losses, and improved animal welfare. Producers now have 24/7 access to location, reproductive performance, and health trends without ever needing to step foot in the pasture, bringing the livestock industry into the age of connected intelligence. 

The partnership between 701x, Skylo, and KYOCERA AVX shows what’s possible when satellite connectivity and smart engineering come together to solve real-world problems and drive transformational change—one ear tag at a time. 

To learn more about the 701x xTpro, click here: https://www.701x.com/xtpro-tag?srsltid=AfmBOorMy3hTgtqe47OH4gDniYbF-hDi3hmNQFZXUkPBooAa-yCBuGak 

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