Real time positioning to detect early signs of welfare problems in cows
Résumé
Biological rhythms are essential for life. There is evidence that the circadian rhythm of
activity is disrupted under chronic stress. It may also be less marked during diseases. We
investigated if we could detect a circadian rhythm of activity of dairy cow
s in commercial
settings using a real
-
time positioning system. We used the CowView (GEA
Farm
Technologies) to detect
regularly
the individual positions of
3
50
cows in
a Danish dairy
farm
for
five
months
, and to infer
the cows’
activity
(
resting
, feed
ing
,
standing,
and walking
)
from
their position and their movements
.
We
ran
a factorial analysis of correspondence
s
of the
cows’ activities
and used t
he 1
st
component
of
this
analysis
to
express the variations
in
activity
. On this axis,
the four activities obtained
the following
weights:
resting,
-
.19;
standing
, +0.12; walking, +.26; and feeding, +.29. Applying
these
weights
to the proportions
of time each cow spent on
each of
the four activities, we
could
describe a circadian rhythm of
a
ctivity.
We noticed that t
he average level of activity of a cow on a given day and its
variations during that day var
ied
with specific states: heat, lameness, disease. This offers the
possibil
ity to design models to predict physiological or pathological st
ates
of cows
from real
time positioning.
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