Integration of Cow Activity in Individual Management Systems; Analysis of Individual Feeding Patterns in Automatic Milking Systems

Abstract

With increasing possibilities to obtain on-line information on an individual cow, systems for individual management can be developed. Cow activities such as feeding patterns from automatically obtained records can be valuable input information in these systems. With the aim of analyzing individual feeding patterns, records of 30 fresh cows from feeding stations (n=111176) were extracted. To obtain a reliable method of grouping feeding visits into meals, intervals between visits were modeled in a mixture of lognormal densities. Meal criteria, i.e. the longest interval between two feeding visits to not separate two meals, ranged from 49 to 76 min, which were longer than what has been reported for dairy cows in loose housings with conventional milking systems. The major part (83 to 96%) of the random variation in feeding patterns of the cows was due to differences between individual cows. It was concluded that feeding patterns are characteristic for individual cows and consistent over time, making them valuable in individual management control systems. Further, meal criteria differed between individual cows as well as cow traffic systems. Arbitrary chosen meal criteria may be misleading in analyses of feeding patterns

Published in

Publisher: eds. Meijering, A., Hogeveen, H. and deKoning, C.J.A.M

Conference

Automatic Milking-a better understanding

SLU Authors

• Melin, Martin

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science
Veterinary Science

Publication identifier

• ISBN: 9076998388

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/3614