Know when an animal is sick or being taken, while there is still time to act.
Solar collars and ear-tag gateways send position, movement and body temperature. Cameras watch the kraal gate. The system explains what it sees in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi and English, drafts the message to the stock theft unit and traditional authority, and waits for a person to decide.
Herds on one ward
Illustrative only. Not live telemetry.- It flags unusual movement, fever-like readings and gate visitors, and drafts plain-language alerts and reports. It produces leads for people to act on.
- It does not diagnose disease, does not identify or accuse any person, and does not replace the police, the state vet or your livestock register and brand marks.
- Suspected foot-and-mouth disease must be reported to the state vet. No report or work order goes out until a named person approves it.
This solution requires current AI models to operate. Kraal Guard is a product of O H MEDIA.
By the time you know, the herd is gone or the disease has spread.
For a smallholder, a few animals are savings, school fees and food. Cattle graze far from the homestead, theft happens at night, and a sick animal can look fine at the morning count. The gap is the time between the event and anyone who can act finding out.
- Animals graze out of sightCommonage, no fence
- Theft at night, or quiet illnessNobody is watching
- Owner finds out lateHours or days
- Report is slowDistance, no vehicle, no airtime
- Trail goes cold, disease spreadsMixing at dip tanks and grazing
- Herd lost or market blockedIncome and savings gone
- Restock, then repeatUntil the next event
How the system classifies what it sees
One-off event
A single strayed animal or one feverish beast. Check it, fix it, note it.
Repeating pattern
The same gate, route or dip tank shows up again and again. This points to a theft corridor or a disease pathway.
Not enough evidence
A collar is offline or readings are noisy. The system asks for a field check instead of guessing.
From a collar reading to a decision a person can trust.
Seven stages. The last one is always a human.
Sense
Solar GPS collars or ear-tag gateways report position, activity and body temperature. A camera trap at the kraal gate records when something moves.
Send
A solar gateway at the kraal forwards small packets over LoRaWAN or NB-IoT, so it works where signal and data are limited.
Detect
GPT-6 Luna looks for unusual movement: a herd moving as a group at night, an animal leaving a known grazing pattern, or an activity drop that suggests illness.
Verify
Image 2 checks gate photos and farmer photos to match animals to the register and spot visible wounds. It does not name or identify people.
Explain
GPT-6 Sol writes theft-risk maps and health alerts in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi and English, with simple steps such as isolating an animal and calling the vet.
Coordinate
GPT-6 Astra drafts the briefing for the stock theft unit and the traditional authority, so both get the same facts and last known positions.
Decide
A duty officer, stock theft commander or state vet approves, changes, rejects, asks for a field check, or escalates. Nothing is sent before that click.
Six roles. Each does one job.
Separate roles are easier to test, replace and audit than one AI doing everything. The last role is a person.
Edge rules
Geofence and temperature thresholds run on the device or gateway, optionally on an NVIDIA Jetson, so alerts still work when the connection drops.
Movement and health anomalies
Flags unusual movement and activity or temperature patterns and separates them from ordinary grazing.
Animal and wound check
Reads gate and phone photos to match animals to the register and detect visible wounds. Output is a visual opinion.
Maps and alerts
Generates theft-risk maps and health alerts in four languages, with voice notes for people who prefer to listen.
Coordination
Drafts reports for stock theft units and traditional authorities from the same evidence, and tracks what was agreed.
Human reviewer
A stock theft unit commander, state vet or animal health technician, with a traditional authority liaison in the loop. Only a person can approve, change, reject, escalate or ask for a field check. This role is never removed.
Where it can run
Azure IoT with Azure OpenAI; AWS IoT with Bedrock; Google Cloud IoT with Vertex AI; NVIDIA edge inference.
Disclosure
Model names come from the project brief. Check every model identifier against your provider's current documentation before you rely on it. In the demo all AI outputs are simulated to show the shape of the workflow. AI outputs are probabilistic and carry a confidence value; they are advice, not fact.
This solution requires current AI models to operate; the models listed (or their current equivalents) are essential to the production system.
Planning estimate only, not a quote: cloud and messaging costs of roughly R2 000 to R7 000 per month for a district of about thirty herds, before collars, cameras and field work. Actual cost depends on animal count, message volume, data plans and provider pricing.
Take the livestock helper apart. Then make trouble.
Drag to turn the model. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Use Assembly view to pull it into parts, then click any part to learn what it does. Choose Theft or Sickness, then move the slider and watch the collar, camera, phone and response vehicle react.
- Collar on the cow: watches movement and health.
- Camera at the gate: sees who enters. The cone is what it can see.
- Solar box: gives power to the camera and radio.
- Big phone: sends a simple warning to the farmer.
- Cows and goats in the kraal: the animals being protected.
- Spinning wire ball: the AI that reads the data.
- Dark board: the stock theft unit and vet desk, where a human decides.
- White vehicle: the response team. It only goes when a human approves.
- Ring on the ground: the geofence. It turns red when an animal is outside it.
- Dark figure: a stranger, shown only in Theft mode.
The model is simplified for teaching. Real installations differ in size, layout and sensors.
What goes wrong?
Trouble level
Model values, simulated.
Response vehicle
Waiting at the depot.
Message to the farmer
Draft wording. Have native speakers review every translation before use.
Click a part
Choose Assembly view, then click a label or a part to see what it does.
Why this is needed, from people who checked.
Livestock animals reported stolen in South Africa between January and March 2026, according to SAPS quarterly figures reported by Vutivi Business. Sheep were the most stolen, at 16 816.
KwaZulu-Natal's share of all reported stock theft cases in that period, the highest of any province.
The national Department of Agriculture reported that the current foot-and-mouth outbreaks first showed up at communal dip tanks and small-scale farms before reaching commercial herds.
How each part of the system answers a documented gap
- Collars and Luna notice a herd leaving at night and a beast running a fever before the morning count.
- The gate camera and Image 2 answer the problem that farmers often cannot say what happened or which animals were taken.
- Sol's theft-risk maps show patterns that police and forums say are needed to target patrols.
- Astra's shared briefings give stock theft units and traditional authorities the same facts at the same time.
- The human reviewer keeps decisions with the police, state vet and community leaders.
Sources
Each link was found and checked when this page was built. Summaries are in our own words. We link to the publishers' reporting and do not copy it.
Farmers face severe losses as livestock theft rises
Vutivi Business, May 2026. Reports the SAPS quarterly figures for January to March 2026, the most-stolen animals and the provincial hotspots. Why it matters: it is the current national baseline for the scale of theft.
Farmers' perceptions on stock theft in some districts of the Eastern Cape Province
PLOS One, 2024, University of Fort Hare and UNISA. A peer-reviewed survey of farmers, which found theft was significantly more likely in winter. Why it matters: theft follows patterns that a system can learn and map.
Livestock farmers urged to step up fight against stock theft
Farmer's Weekly, 2026. Stock theft forum leaders say poor animal identification and inaccurate stock records are major obstacles, and urge reporting of every case. Why it matters: identification and evidence are exactly what collars and gate images supply.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak report, 31 March 2026
National Department of Agriculture technical report. It describes new outbreaks and notes that events began at communal dip tanks and small-scale farms and later reached commercial herds. Why it matters: it is official recognition that early detection in small herds matters.
Why South Africa's foot-and-mouth disease outbreak threatens exports and jobs
IOL, 11 February 2026. A communal farmer group near Humansdorp lost animals and a planned auction sale to the disease. Why it matters: it shows the direct income loss for communal farmers when illness is found late.
The impact of foot-and-mouth disease on household food security among smallholder farmers in KwaZulu-Natal
Published 2026 in a peer-reviewed journal. It finds foot-and-mouth disease is a significant threat to smallholder livelihoods and household food security. Why it matters: it links animal health directly to whether households eat.
Photos: this site uses original inline illustrations so it runs as one portable file. Each publisher's own photographs are on the linked articles.
Communal farming areas where these losses are reported.
Each card pulls current weather for the area from Open-Meteo, a free public service. Heat and humidity matter for animal health: hot, humid weather raises heat stress and can mask fever. The stage on each card is our own internal designation, not something the weather feed tells us.
Heat stress index: a temperature-humidity index (THI) for cattle, calculated from the live temperature and humidity. Bands used here: under 72 comfortable, 72 to 78 mild stress, 79 to 88 moderate, 89 and above severe. These are commonly used guide bands and illustrative only, not veterinary advice. Town-level coordinates are approximate. Open-Meteo covers cells of roughly 10 km.
Why this matters.
A herd is savings, income and security for a family. Knowing early, in a language you speak, is the difference between a loss and a save.
A note from the founder
What each person gets
Hear about trouble in time
A plain alert in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho sa Leboa or English, with a voice note, while there is still time to act.
Visit the right herd first
Fever and activity patterns point to herds that need a visit, instead of waiting for reports.
Last known positions
A briefing built from the same evidence the farmer saw, with movement trails to speed up a response.
Shared facts
Liaison officers see the same picture as the police, which supports trust and local follow-up.
An auditable record
Every recommendation and every human decision is logged, so outcomes can be reviewed.
Protected livelihoods
Fewer unnoticed losses and earlier disease awareness help protect household food and income.
Why we think it can work
Stock theft units, state vets and traditional authorities already work by report, verification and decision. Kraal Guard speeds up the first two steps and leaves the decision with a person.
Honest scope
These benefits are design intent for a prototype. They are not measured results, and no production deployment exists yet.
Ten short articles on the problem and the fix.
Each one states the problem, how the AI and the Solution Bot help, and which AI models are candidates. Models are under evaluation, not endorsements. Check identifiers against current provider documentation.
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Who is behind Kraal Guard.
Kraal Guard is a product of O H MEDIA, a registered South African private company. Procurement teams, departments and funders can check who they are dealing with below, and download the company's registration documents.
Why this was built
Funding and next stage
Kraal Guard is a product of O H MEDIA. The startup currently has no external funding and requires investment to begin the new project and move from this working prototype into production. Microsoft Azure for Startups, AWS Activate / AWS Startups, NVIDIA Inception, and peer AI and cloud startup programmes are the natural partners for this stage because Kraal Guard is built on the same stack those programmes exist to accelerate: modern AI models for scoring, advisory generation, long-context pattern analysis and vision verification, plus cloud infrastructure for secure data ingest and human-in-the-loop decision support. Grant or programme support from these partners directly funds the next phase — real backend, real integrations, and pilot deployments with municipalities or enterprise buyers — while the human-always-decides architecture already demonstrated on this site keeps governance and liability clear. Without that support the project remains a high-fidelity prototype; with it, O H MEDIA can deliver a production system that depends on current AI models and that those programmes are designed to help scale.
Company registration
Contact
Departmental emails
Company documents
CIPC registration certificate (COR 14.3), Memorandum of Incorporation (COR 15.1A) and company disclosure, issued 9 September 2026.
Public copy. The director's ID number and personal email address are removed for privacy. The full original is available to procurement teams and funders on request to admin@ohmedia.co.za.
How we handle your personal information.
This notice is given under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA). It is written in plain language and describes what this website actually does. Last updated 30 September 2026.
1. Who is responsible
The responsible party is O H MEDIA, registration number 2026/723672/07, 34 Squirrel Street, Villa Liza, Boksburg, Gauteng, 1459. Kraal Guard is a product of O H MEDIA.
Information Officer: Chantelle Palesa Malahlela, Director.
Privacy requests: admin@ohmedia.co.za · 081 306 7945
2. What we collect
- Emails and messages you send us. The Contact page stores nothing: it opens your own email app with a message pre-filled, and nothing is sent until you press send there. If you email us or phone us, we receive your name, contact details and whatever you choose to tell us.
- The demo sign-in. If you open the demo, you may type a name and pick a role. These are kept only in your browser while the page is open. They are not sent to us, stored on a server, or used to create an account.
- No cookies, no tracking. We do not use cookies, analytics, advertising or browser storage on this website.
3. Why we use it
Only to reply to your enquiry, to respond to quotation requests (RFQs), to deal with funders, partners and suppliers, and to meet our legal duties as a company. We do not sell your information and we do not use it for marketing unless you ask to hear from us.
4. Third parties that see your visit
When a page loads, your browser contacts these services directly, and they can see your IP address and device details. We do not receive that information.
- Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com, fonts.gstatic.com) for the typefaces.
- cdnjs / Cloudflare (cdnjs.cloudflare.com) for the 3D model library.
- Open-Meteo (api.open-meteo.com) for live weather, when you open the Coverage page or the demo.
5. How long we keep it
Emails and business records are kept only as long as needed for the purpose above or as the law requires (for example, company and tax records), and are then deleted.
6. Keeping it safe
We keep business email and records on access-controlled accounts and only share information with people who need it. If a security compromise affects your information, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
7. Your rights
You may ask us to tell you whether we hold your personal information, to see it, to correct it, or to delete it. You may also object to us using it. Email admin@ohmedia.co.za and we will respond within a reasonable time.
If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za · enquiries@inforegulator.org.za · 010 023 5200 · inforegulator.org.za
8. Herd and farmer data in a live service
The demo on this website uses simulated herds and simulated people. If Kraal Guard is deployed for real farmers, we will collect farmer names, contact details, herd locations and animal readings only for the service, and will give each farmer a separate notice and ask for consent before that begins. This notice will be updated first.
9. Changes
If this notice changes, the new version will appear on this page with a new date.