Cow Toilet Tech: Cut Ammonia and Power Smarter Dairying

Ammonia isn’t just a smell problem. It’s a balance-sheet problem, a compliance problem, and—more and more—an access-to-markets problem. When regulators and processors talk about emissions, they’re often talking about nitrogen losses that started in the shed, minutes after urine hits the floor.

That’s why a “toilet for cows” won two awards at the LAMMA Innovation Awards 2026: it targets the moment ammonia is created, not the symptoms later. Hanskamp’s CowToilet is built around a simple biological truth—cows don’t urinate and defecate at the same time—and uses that to keep urine and manure apart before they can react.

This post is part of our AI in Agriculture and AgriTech series, and here’s the connection I think matters: the CowToilet isn’t only waste hardware; it’s a new data point in precision livestock management. If you’re already investing in sensors, monitoring, and compliance reporting, urine separation can slot into the same “measure → decide → act” loop that makes AI in agriculture pay off.

Why separating urine and manure cuts ammonia (and why it matters)

Ammonia emissions in cattle housing are largely a chemistry timing issue—mix urine (urea) with faeces (urease enzymes) and you accelerate ammonia formation. If you stop the mix, you slow the reaction and reduce emissions at source.

Hanskamp’s CowToilet approach is direct: collect urine before it contacts solid manure. The developers reference research from Wageningen Livestock Research indicating that urine-manure separation can reduce:

• Ammonia emissions by up to 38%
• Total nitrogen by 33%
• Nitrous oxide by 18%

Those are big numbers because they’re tied to a single intervention point: the shed floor. For many farms, shed-based ammonia reduction is where practical options get thin quickly—especially when you want changes that don’t add hours of labour.

The compliance and market-access angle

Environmental targets are becoming operational targets. If your system can demonstrate lower nitrogen losses, it supports:

• Planning and licensing conversations (where housing emissions assumptions can make or break an expansion)
• Processor sustainability programmes and on-farm audits
• Future proofing for tightening national ammonia ceilings and nutrient rules

A “cow toilet” sounds like a novelty until you view it as source-control technology—the same mindset as capturing slurry gases, sealing storage, or switching to low-emission spreading. Source control tends to outperform downstream fixes.

How the CowToilet works in a real shed workflow

The CowToilet is designed to integrate into a free-access, out-of-parlour feeding station, meaning it fits into a behaviour you already rely on: cows walking to feed.

Here’s the operating concept described by the developers:

1. A cow enters the feeding station to eat.
2. A component rubs against the suspensory ligament of the udder, triggering a urination reflex.
3. Urine is collected in a sealed receptacle positioned under the tail.
4. The urine is removed by suction and stored in a tank.

The key operational claim is that it’s built to work with normal cow behaviour and doesn’t require staff to “train” cows in the human sense. The unit is also sized as a shared resource: each unit is designed to serve about 25 cows, and the system is already in use on 35+ dairy farms in the Netherlands.

Animal welfare: this is where many technologies fail

Most companies get this wrong: they design for engineering elegance, then discover cows don’t cooperate.

A system like this lives or dies by three welfare realities:

• Cow willingness to enter (traffic flow, social pressure, station placement)
• Comfort and non-slip footing (a poor surface will reduce visits fast)
• No negative association with the stimulus and collection mechanism

If you’re evaluating any smart livestock tech—AI cameras, rumination collars, auto-drafting—the first question is the same: will cows reliably interact with it without stress? If not, your data and your results fall apart.

Turning waste into a resource (and why urine is the prize)

Separated urine is nitrogen-rich and relatively “clean” compared with mixed slurry, which is why the CowToilet’s creators position it as more than an emissions tool.

When urine and manure stay separate:

• Urine holds much of the readily available nitrogen (valuable for crop uptake when managed correctly).
• Solid manure retains more phosphate and organic matter, supporting soil structure and long-term fertility.

That matters for two reasons.

First, it supports nutrient efficiency. If you can direct urine-derived nitrogen to the right field at the right time, you’re closer to the precision nutrient management goal that keeps popping up in every sustainability plan.

Second, it opens up a more serious conversation about on-farm nutrient product streams:

• On-farm use (targeted fertiliser replacement)
• Cooperative processing (regional nutrient balancing)
• Potential sale where regulations and logistics allow

I’m cautious about “sell the urine” claims because local rules, storage, and transport economics can get messy quickly. But even without sales, the internal value is real if it replaces purchased nitrogen or improves nutrient compliance.

The AI-in-agriculture connection: toilets create data, not just savings

The biggest missed opportunity in emissions tech is treating it as a standalone gadget. In 2026, farms that win will connect interventions to measurement—because reporting, benchmarking, and margin control all depend on that.

A CowToilet-style system can become a new signal in your precision livestock monitoring stack.

What data can a urine-capture station generate?

Even without speculating on exact sensors, the workflow naturally supports measurable events:

• Cow visits per day (traffic patterns)
• Urination events captured (frequency and regularity)
• Volume captured per station per day (aggregate output)
• Exceptions (cows that stop visiting, reduced output, abnormal patterns)

Now connect that to AI in agriculture:

• Health monitoring: changes in urination frequency or station visits can flag stress, lameness, or emerging health issues (as a supporting indicator, not a standalone diagnosis).
• Welfare and housing management: if visits drop, it may point to poor station placement, bullying, slippery floors, or ration changes.
• Emissions reporting: if you can quantify captured urine and demonstrate separation, you can strengthen the evidence base behind ammonia reduction claims.

“Answer-first” stance: AI needs clean, consistent farm events

Here’s the thing about farm AI: it doesn’t need more dashboards—it needs reliable events.

A urine-separation station creates a repeatable event (a visit) that can be timestamped and counted. That’s gold for analytics. When you combine it with:

• milk yield data,
• activity/rumination data,
• feeding system data,
• and housing environment sensors,

…you can start building practical models that answer farm questions people actually care about:

• Which group layout increases station use and reduces emissions?
• Do high-yield cows visit differently, and does that correlate with urinary nitrogen capture?
• Can we detect a welfare issue earlier by spotting changes in visit patterns?

The hardware is the start; the system value grows when it’s integrated.

Practical adoption: what to assess before you buy (or trial)

If you’re considering urine separation technology, the real question is whether it fits your cow flow, labour profile, and compliance goals. A shiny demo doesn’t tell you that.

Shed fit and cow flow checklist

Start with constraints, not features. Walk the shed and answer these:

• Where would the feeding station sit without creating bottlenecks?
• Can timid cows access it, or will dominant cows block it?
• Is the floor surface suitable year-round?
• What’s the cleaning routine—daily, weekly, pressure washing—and who owns it?
• Where will the urine tank go, and how will you manage overflow risk?

Labour and maintenance reality

Any sustainability tool that adds an hour a day will be abandoned.

Before committing, clarify:

• Consumables and wear parts
• Cleaning time per unit
• Alarm/notification approach (what triggers a call-out?)
• Downtime procedure (what happens if suction fails?)

Data and integration questions (don’t skip these)

If you’re in the smart farming mindset, ask for a straight answer on:

• What data outputs are available (counts, volumes, timestamps)?
• Can it export data to your herd management platform?
• Who owns the data, and how is it stored?

You don’t need perfection on day one. You do need a path that avoids data dead-ends.

Where this goes next: smarter nitrogen, better margins

The LAMMA awards matter because they signal that emissions reduction is moving from “nice-to-have” to “mainstream buying criteria.” The CowToilet took gold for future environmental benefit and bronze in livestock/dairy innovation, which is a strong indicator that the industry expects practical, farm-ready solutions—not just policy talk.

If I had to place a bet on what comes next, it’s this: urine separation will start to be evaluated alongside other precision agriculture investments, not separate from them. Farms will ask whether a technology improves:

• compliance confidence,
• nutrient efficiency,
• and the quality of farm data.

That’s the new baseline for agri-tech.

As part of the AI in Agriculture and AgriTech series, I’d argue this is the real story behind a “toilet for cows”: it’s a measurable intervention that reduces ammonia at source and creates structured events that AI can use to improve herd management.

If you’re planning 2026 investments, a good next step is to map your farm’s biggest nitrogen loss points and decide where data would change decisions—not just where it would look impressive in a report. Which single measurement on your farm would most improve your next nutrient plan or housing upgrade?