How Moocall works

“If the cow hadn’t rung, the calf would have been dead. We’ve only had the gadget for a week, it’s all new technology and there’s an automated voice.

“I couldn’t believe it worked. It’s marvellous.”

Pregnant cattle, part of a 600-strong herd at the picturesque farm, will be fitted with the gadget a day or two before they look likely to give birth.

Mr Hall added: “It’s designed for when things go wrong in the middle of the night.

“There was a time farmers were coming down in the morning and there’d be a cow with a dead calf. But it was at 11am yesterday morning when it rang and Scott was in another field but was able to get there.”

He used a calving aid to help the cow safely deliver its calf. THE Moocall calving sensor is fitted to a cow’s tail.

It is a calving alert system that notifies a farmer one hour before a cow is due to begin calving.

It monitors a cow’s tail movements and alerts the owner by mobile phone when the cow needs help.

Moocall monitors contractions and sends text messages and calls up to two mobile phones.

Moocall monitors cows, heifers and unborn calves in 30 different countries around the world.

It was created after Niall Austin lost a heifer and her calf due to a difficult calving back in 2010. He had a theory that a device to measure tail movement might be able to predict the onset of calving and brought the idea to the other Moocall founders Michael Stanley and Emmet Savage. It costs £239.