Health assessment of cows based on different behavior time

Cows’health is the foundation of large scale dairy farm’development. How to monitor cows accurately and management efficiently is important to the development of scale dairy farm. In the spring of 2018, 17 high-yielding Holstein lactation cows were selected from the same group of Anxing dairy farm in Hulin city for experimental study. The sample cows’average weight (500±50) kg and lactation age (203±83) days. The average daily milk yield of each cow was (30±2) kg. Materials selected for this experiment include lactating cows, computers, cow collars (MooMonitor+, Dairymaster, Ireland), data base stations, and amazon cloud storage terminal. The cows and computer were provided by Anxing dairy farm. The cow collar and data base station were provided by Dairy Master company in Ireland, and the cow collar is equipped with the MEMS (micro electro-mechanical system) accelerometer, according to the principle of accelerometer sensor technology, big data clustering analysis was carried out for the time of acceleration changes in different directions, and the position of cows was tracked through RFID tags to monitor the activity behavior of cows. Refer to the number of samples selected by domestic and foreign scholars related to cow feeding behavior, ruminant behavior, reclining and resting behavior and estrus behavior. From April 1, 2018 to May 31, 2018, Dairymaster’s Moonmonitor + information collection system was used to monitor and collect test data of 17 cows’behavior time every day (24h) in Anxing dairy farm, and physical health conditions of the cows were recorded the worker at the same time, such as mastitis, lameness, diarrhea and trauma. During the test period, test data were downloaded from the cloud data storage server through the monitor system at 08:00 am every day for 61 days. The data collection interval was 24 h, the downloaded data includes the rest time (min/24 h), rumination time (min/24 h) and feeding time (min/24 h) of the cows, and 1 037 data records were obtained. And 937 data were randomly selected as training data set, one hundred data were randomly selected as validation data to verify the model prediction. Then, binary logistic regression analysis method and statistical analysis software SPSS23.0 were used to study the collected data. In order to meet the binary logistic regression analysis conditions, the different behaviors time were converted into classification variables. The independent variables of binomial Logistic regression model were entered by force method. The entry criteria of variables was α0.1. The results showed that: 1) The behavior time changed differently in different cows, and the average rest time changed greatly. The average rest time during abnormal behavior period increased by 25.7% compared with that during normal behavior period. Compared with the normal behavior period, the ruminant time and feeding time during abnormal behavior period decreased by 12.7% and 2.3%, respectively. 2) The behavior time of healthy Holstein lactation cows was normally distributed, with an average rest time of 300-600 min, ruminant time of 400-700 min and feeding time of 200-400 min per day (24 h). The behavior time of abnormal cows was distributed discreetly without obvious distribution rule. 3) Rest time and feeding time are the main influencing factors of the prediction model, among which feeding time had a greater influence on the prediction probability of the model than rest time. When other conditions remain unchanged, the prediction probability change of abnormal behavior of cows increased by 4.2 times for one additional unit of feeding time. Compared with the results of human visual observation, the prediction accuracy of the model was 91%. Therefore, the paper can provide a reference for scientific and accurate management of modern large-scale dairy farms. © 2019, Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.