Dairy Drive is an innovative platform designed to help farmers and veterinarians monitor the health and generational lineage of farm animals. It tracks vital signs, input/output data, and parentage to provide insights, enabling farmers to make informed decisions that improve animal welfare and farm efficiency. The platform integrates technology with traditional farm management practices, offering a user-friendly interface accessible via both web and mobile devices. Whether it's monitoring feed and growth rates or tracking an animal’s health history, Dairy Drive offers a comprehensive solution for streamlining livestock management.
The focus behind the creation of daily drive was coming up with an intuitive platform that would meet the needs of our target users—farmers and veterinarians managing both large-scale and small-scale livestock operations. My primary responsibility was ensuring that the user experience was seamless and efficient while coordinating the project timeline to keep everything on track.
Growing up in rural Kenya, I spent my school holidays at my grandparents’ farm in the western part of the country. It was a small-scale operation with cattle, goats, and chickens. I remember waking up at dawn to the sound of cows mooing and watching my uncle manage the farm. Like many farmers in the area, my grandparents relied on traditional knowledge and intuition to care for the animals, which was a skill that was passed on to me over time. But I also saw the consequences of not having access to modern tools. One rainy season, a disease spread through the herd, and by the time it was noticed, it had already caused significant losses. I remember the worry and frustration on my grandparents' faces, and I often wondered if there was a better way to prevent such situations
Years later, as I grew more interested in technology and its potential to solve real-world problems, those memories from the farm stayed with me. I realized that the issues my grandparents faced weren’t unique to them—they were part of a broader challenge in agriculture. With the rise of data-driven solutions, I saw an opportunity to combine my background in tech with a personal desire to improve livestock health. That’s why I chose to work on Dairy Drive. It’s more than just a project to me; it’s a way to bring modern solutions to an age-old problem, helping farmers like my grandparents better care for their animals and ultimately create more sustainable farming practices.
With Dairy Drive, I successfully created a platform that allows farmers to monitor the health and productivity of their livestock by integrating data analysis, and an intuitive user interface, the platform tracks animal details, parentage, input/output metrics, and health history. This ensures that farmers can make proactive decisions about animal care and management, ultimately reducing the risk of disease and improving productivity.
One of the key accomplishments was establishing a friendly user interface for farmers to input data and subsequent accurate feedback on the current records of the livestock. The productivity data is processed through the backend server, where it is analyzed and stored. This data is subsequently visualized for the user in the form of reports and notifications on both web and mobile platforms.

I chose to use Vue.js withVuetify for frontend to build an interface that could handle data updates because of its component-based architecture, which allowed us to modularize the interface for easy updates and scalability. For Backend, I used Python with the Django framework, as it provided a robust and scalable structure for handling data flow, processing sensor inputs, and managing database interactions. Django’s built-in features, such as user authentication and its ORM (Object-Relational Mapper), made it easier to set up a secure and efficient system. PostgreSQL was selected for storing health data, animal records, and input/output metrics. Google firebase was also used for file storage
The features completed so far include detailed recording of the number of animals, age, weight, purchase price, each animal's lineage, allowing farmers to make informed breeding decisions. This feature includes tracking of traits across generations, which is useful for improving livestock quality. Apart from that, farmers can track the feed and water provided to each animal, alongside their output (e.g., milk production or growth rates), and receive recommendations on how to optimize inputs for better productivity. Health records and expenses are also recorded against the returns to monitor profit.
One of the key challenges we faced during the development of Daily Drive was the difficulty in deploying a Django server due to budget constraints. Setting up a live environment required financial resources that were beyond our reach at the time, especially considering the scope of the project, which included managing large datasets and complex features. Additionally, given the limited time available, it was not feasible to fully implement and deploy all features as initially planned. The complexity of scaling the platform while ensuring a secure and reliable backend added further pressure, ultimately forcing me to rethink our deployment strategy and consider alternative solutions for future stages of development.
Working on Dairy Drive has been a transformative experience for me, both technically and personally. One of the biggest technical takeaways was learning how to deal with the unpredictability of real-world environments, particularly in rural settings where resources like stable internet connections are limited. Before this project, I had primarily worked in environments where infrastructure was reliable, so developing a solution that could function under these constraints pushed me to explore new areas.
If I were to approach the project differently, I would start with more user research upfront. Initially, I made assumptions about what farmers in rural areas needed based on my personal experience, but after gathering more feedback, I realized that some of those assumptions didn’t apply across the board. For example, while real-time alerts were crucial for many, others prioritized the ability to store historical data for reporting and trend analysis. Understanding these nuances earlier would have allowed us to prioritize features that had the greatest impact.
This project has also confirmed my belief in the importance of user-centered design. Building a technically sound solution is one thing, but ensuring that it truly addresses the needs of the users is another.
A little insight about me related to this project, I’m a passionate software engineer from Kenya with a focus on creating impactful, user-centered solutions. My background in technology and my personal experiences growing up in a rural area have driven me to develop tools that improve people’s lives. I am particularly interested in projects that intersect technology and social good, and I am always looking for ways to use my skills to benefit underrepresented communities.
GitHub Project: https://github.com/glohvall/dairydrive
Deployed Project Page:
Project Landing Page: https://gloryvalery574.wixsite.com/my-site
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glory-valery-b3152716a/