Capture
Cameras and sensors record each cow during a routine health check, or as she walks out of the milking parlour. The measurement happens inside work the farm already does.
Petiole × MooMore
Inflammation has a temperature.
MooMore is Petiole's visual AI project for dairy cattle. It reads the heat in a cow's foot and flags her before the limp appears — and a twelve-month trial on a working farm is testing how much earlier that is.
MooMore is a screening aid, not a diagnostic device. It is in on-farm validation, not general release.
What farm staff see
Normal
No action needed.
Watch
Keep an eye on her over the next few days.
Check
Look at this cow's feet.
£330
Average cost of a lameness case to a UK dairy farm (AHDB)
650
Cows in the on-farm validation herd
12 months
On-farm validation, July 2026 to June 2027
£75,000
Innovate UK Women in Innovation grant
The short answer
What MooMore is
MooMore is a visual AI system for dairy cattle health and welfare monitoring. It uses thermal (infrared) imaging to detect the early signs of inflammation in a cow's foot — before she changes the way she walks — and turns that reading into a single Normal / Watch / Check risk score that farm staff can act on without specialist training. MooMore is developed by Petiole Pro (Petiole Ltd), a Cambridgeshire agritech company, and is supported by Innovate UK through the Women in Innovation programme.
Petiole has spent a decade turning photographs into measurements: leaf area, greenness, organ counts, germination rates. MooMore applies the same discipline — computer vision that measures rather than estimates — to an animal instead of a plant. The camera changes, the question does not: what can be read from an image that a person cannot yet see?
MooMore combines cameras and sensors with on-device AI to assess individual cows during a routine health check, or as they leave the milking parlour. Each animal is measured against her own history rather than a herd average, which removes the effect of ambient conditions and of natural variation between cows.
The problem
Lameness is usually found once the cow is already in pain.
Lameness is one of the most costly and welfare-critical conditions in British dairy farming, yet it is typically identified only after a cow has begun to limp. Cows instinctively mask discomfort, and by the time a change in gait is visible the damage inside the foot is often established.
The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board puts the average cost of a case at around £330 in treatment, lost yield and labour. Multiply that across a herd and it becomes one of the larger controllable losses on a dairy farm — at a time when margins are already under severe pressure.
Inflammation, however, raises the surface temperature of the foot before it changes how the cow walks. That gap between measurable and visible is the window MooMore is built to open.
How it works
Four steps, none of which add a job to the day.
Compare
Readings are assessed against that cow's own history rather than a herd average, so ambient conditions and natural differences between animals do not drive the result.
Score
AI turns the reading into one risk score in near real time — Normal, Watch or Check. No thermal image interpretation is asked of the person reading it.
Act
Staff look at the flagged cows first. The vet, the RoMS mobility scorer and the hoof trimmer keep doing exactly what they do — only sooner, and on the right animals.
Where it fits
One method, three subjects.
MooMore is not a departure from what Petiole does. It is the same computer-vision discipline pointed at a different living thing.
Petiole Pro — the plant
Turns plant images into measurable data: leaf area, greenness, object and germination counts, damage assessment. Structured, exportable results instead of estimates.
Explore Petiole Pro →Petiole Spruce — the record
An AI-ready data and operations platform that connects field images, measurements, maps and workflows, so a season's observations become one queryable record.
Explore Petiole Spruce →MooMore — the animal
Thermal imaging and AI applied to dairy cattle welfare, detecting the early signs of lameness before they are visible. In on-farm validation to June 2027.
Go to moomore.com ↗
Validation
Proved on a working farm, not in a lab.
Rather than launch a finished product, Petiole is testing MooMore where it has to work. A twelve-month pilot is under way with Major Farming Ltd, a Duchy of Lancaster tenancy farm in Staffordshire. The question is narrow and testable: does a temperature difference between a cow's feet flag her earlier than the farm's existing checks do?
| Partner farm | Major Farming Ltd, Staffordshire — a Duchy of Lancaster tenancy farm, in its 100th year of family stewardship |
|---|---|
| Herd | 650 New Zealand Friesian × Jersey crossbred cows |
| System | Extensive spring-calving grazing |
| Programme | 12 months — July 2026 to June 2027 |
| The farm's role | Hosts the equipment, contributes herd expertise and ground-truth labelling |
| Benchmark | The farm's own health and mobility records |
| Publication | Findings published whether or not the signal holds |
The first on-farm sensor session ran on 22 July 2026. MooMore recorded a full day of continuous movement data from a cow at Major Farming Ltd and compared it against the farm's existing herd monitoring; grazing time measured by the two systems agreed to within about five minutes per hour. The purpose was not the individual animal but the method — confirming that MooMore's readings hold up against an independent record, and building a baseline of normal daily behaviour against which thermal readings can later be judged.
Progress is published roughly monthly for the duration of the project, on moomore.com.
Recognition
Backed by Innovate UK.
On 5 August 2026, Dr. Maryna Kuzmenko was named an Innovate UK Women in Innovation winner for MooMore. The award carries a £75,000 grant and twelve months of business support, and funds the on-farm validation now running in Staffordshire.
It falls in the tenth anniversary year of the programme, which recognised 100 women entrepreneurs from every region of the UK out of a record 1,590 applications — the largest cohort in the programme's history.
Petiole's earlier work has been supported by Innovate UK and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation. More of that history is on the company history page.
Who is behind it
A founder and a farm manager.
MooMore is built by people who have to answer to a real herd. Both are Oxford Farming Conference Inspire Programme 2026 Fellows.
Dr. Maryna Kuzmenko
Founder, MooMore · Co-founder & CEO, PetioleA UK agritech founder who has spent a decade applying computer vision and AI in agriculture, and who has led three Innovate UK-funded projects, MooMore among them. Read her Petiole profile.
William Sanders
Farm Manager, Major Farming LtdManages the 650-cow herd MooMore is measured against, and provides the health records that serve as the pilot's benchmark. Full biographies are on the MooMore people page ↗.
Honest limits
What MooMore does not do.
- It is a screening aid, not a diagnostic device. It indicates that something may be developing; it does not tell you what.
- It does not replace the vet, the RoMS mobility scorer or the hoof trimmer. It points skilled people toward the right animals sooner.
- It is not in general release. MooMore is in on-farm validation running to June 2027, and the findings will be published whether or not the signal holds.
- It has been tested on one herd so far. Results from an extensive spring-calving grazing system should not be assumed to transfer unchanged to a housed herd until that has been shown.
FAQ
Common questions about MooMore
What is MooMore?
MooMore is a visual AI system for dairy cattle health and welfare monitoring. It uses thermal (infrared) imaging to detect the early signs of lameness in a cow's foot before she starts to limp. It is developed by Petiole Pro and supported by Innovate UK.
How does MooMore detect lameness early?
Inflammation raises the surface temperature of a cow's foot before she changes the way she walks. MooMore reads that heat during a routine health check or as cows leave the milking parlour, measures each cow against her own history, and produces a simple Normal / Watch / Check risk score.
Is MooMore part of Petiole?
Yes. MooMore is developed by Petiole Pro (Petiole Ltd), the Cambridgeshire agritech company behind Petiole Pro and Petiole Spruce, and was founded by Dr. Maryna Kuzmenko. It has its own site at moomore.com because its audience — dairy farmers, vets and livestock researchers — is different from the plant-science audience of the rest of Petiole's work.
Does MooMore replace the vet or the mobility scorer?
No. MooMore is a screening aid, not a diagnostic device. It flags at-risk cows earlier so that skilled people — the vet, the RoMS mobility scorer and the hoof trimmer — can act sooner and more cheaply.
Where is MooMore being tested?
In a twelve-month on-farm validation running from July 2026 to June 2027 with Major Farming Ltd, a Staffordshire farm milking 650 crossbred cows on an extensive spring-calving grazing system. The farm's own health records are the benchmark, and the results will be published either way.
How much does dairy lameness cost?
The AHDB estimates around £330 per case in lost milk yield, treatment costs and labour. Detecting cases earlier means less animal suffering, lower vet bills and stronger farm productivity.
Can I use MooMore on my farm?
Not yet — MooMore is in validation rather than general release. Dairy producers, veterinary partners and researchers interested in future pilots are welcome to get in touch at [email protected] or through the Petiole contact page.
How does MooMore relate to Petiole Pro and Petiole Spruce?
They share a method. Petiole Pro turns plant images into measurements, Petiole Spruce keeps those measurements connected to the field they came from, and MooMore applies the same image-to-measurement approach to dairy cattle. The subject changes; the discipline of measuring rather than estimating does not.
MooMore
MooMore has a home of its own.
Monthly progress from the pilot, the full press release, media resources and the people behind the project all live on moomore.com. If you farm dairy cattle, work in veterinary practice, or research livestock welfare, the team would like to hear from you.