Potential for automatic detection of calving in beef cows grazing on rangelands from Global Navigate Satellite System collar data
•Peripartum deaths affect the profitability and environmental footprint of beef farms.•Automatic detection of calving may help to reduce peripartum losses.•Global Navigate Satellite System collars are commercially available to track grazing cattle.•Collar data were used to compute indicators of beha...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Animal (Cambridge, England) England), 2023-08, Vol.17 (8), p.100901-100901, Article 100901 |
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Zusammenfassung: | •Peripartum deaths affect the profitability and environmental footprint of beef farms.•Automatic detection of calving may help to reduce peripartum losses.•Global Navigate Satellite System collars are commercially available to track grazing cattle.•Collar data were used to compute indicators of behavioural changes around calving.•Herd indicators were superior to individual-cow indicators for calving detection.
Dystocia is one of the main causes of calf death around calving. In addition, peripartum deaths may occur due to other factors, such as weather or predators, especially in the case of grazing animals. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) tools aimed at the automatic detection of calving may be useful for farmers, allowing cow assistance in case of dystocia or checking the condition of the cow-calf pair after calving. Such PLF systems are commercially available for dairy cows, but these tools are not suitable for rangelands, mainly due to power and connectivity constraints. Thus, since most commercial PLF tools for rangelands are based on Global Navigate Satellite System (GNSS) technology, the objective of this study was to design and evaluate several indicators built from data gathered with GNSS collars to characterise their potential for the detection of calving on rangelands. Location data from 57 cows, 42 of which calved during the study, were curated and analysed following a standardised procedure. Several indicators were calculated using two different strategies. The first approach consisted of having indicators that could be computed using the data of a single GNSS collar (cow indicators). The second strategy involved the use of data from several animals (herd indicators), which requires more animals to be monitored, but may allow the characterisation of social behaviour. Several indicators, such as the length of the daily trajectory or the sinuosity of cow path, showed significant differences between the pre- and postpartum periods, but no clear differences between calving day and previous days. Herd indicators, such as the distance to herd centroid or to the nearest peer were superior in terms of the detection of calving day, as cows showed isolation behaviour from 24 hours before calving. Relative indicators, i.e., the value of cow or herd indicators for the calving cow in relation to the average value of the same indicators for its herdmates, provided additional information on cow behaviour. For instance, according to the relative indicator fo |
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ISSN: | 1751-7311 1751-732X |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.animal.2023.100901 |