Spatial analysis of thermal conditions of the pre-milking dairy cattle under climatization regimes

The objective of this study was to characterize the spatial variability of air temperature in pre-milking room for different operation times of the automated adiabatic evaporative cooling system. The air temperature was monitored at 35 points, in regular intervals of 1 m, as a grid, to study the spatial variability and construction of kriging maps. Different times of exposure of the animals to the cooling system in the waiting room (20, 30, 40 min and control - 0 min) were considered. Through the results, it was observed that use of geostatistics enabled to define areas with different spatial variability for temperature, identifying specific areas in the pre-milking room that showed values above the recommended levels for the thermal comfort. The cooling system ensured the better thermal condition with the 40 min exposure, obtaining on average temperature within the thermal comfort condition for lactating cows.