RESUMO
Establishing fresh cow monitoring procedures is considered beneficial for cow health, welfare, and productivity. However, they are time consuming and require the cows to be locked up, which restricts their natural behavior. In this study, different fresh cow monitoring procedures were evaluated. Two experiments were conducted to determine: (1) the duration of various examinations and treatments; (2) the time cows remain locked up in headlocks; and (3) the proportion of examination and treatment times relative to the total headlock time. In advance, standard operating procedures were established. Three veterinarians conducted the examinations and treatments based on changes in milk yield, clinical symptoms, and alarms by an accelerometer system. The headlock time was evaluated for three workflow strategies, which differed in the order of examinations and treatments. To determine the duration, cameras were installed, and the video footage was analyzed. The examinations lasted between 1 and 227 s, and the cows were locked up in headlocks between 0.01 and 1.76 h. The lock-up times differed significantly among the three strategies, as well as the proportion. This study provides information that can be used as a basis for the development of time-efficient strategies, and to minimize the impact on cows' time budgets.
RESUMO
Monitoring rumination activity is considered a useful indicator for the early detection of diseases and metabolic disorders. Accelerometer-based sensor systems provide health alerts based on individual thresholds of rumination times in dairy cows. Detailed knowledge of the relationship between sensor-based rumination times and rumen physiology would help detect conspicuous animals and evaluate the treatment's success. This study aimed to investigate the association between sensor-based health alerts and rumen fluid characteristics in Holstein-Friesian cows at different stages of lactation. Rumen fluid was collected via a stomach tube from 63 pairs of cows with and without health alerts (ALRT vs NALRT). Pairs were matched based on the day of lactation, the number of lactations, and health criteria. Rumen fluid was collected during and after health alerts. The parameters of color, odor, consistency, pH, redox potential, sedimentation flotation time, and the number of protozoa were examined. Results showed differences between both groups in odor, rumen pH, sedimentation flotation time, and protozoan count at the first rumen fluid collection. Within the groups, greater variations in rumen fluid parameters were found for ALRT cows compared to NALRT cows. The interaction between health alert and stage of lactation did not affect the rumen fluid parameters.
RESUMO
Lying is a high priority behavior for dairy cows. As the quality of cubicles can influence their lying time, the interest in finding objective methods to assess the quality of floors has increased substantially over recent decades. This study aimed to evaluate a technical device for measuring elastic properties of floors for the application to bedding materials for cows. Ten different floor types were used: horse manure, recycled manure solids, bark mulch, sand, sawdust, and three different rubber mats. Horse manure and bark mulch were additionally tested with chopped straw as a top layer. Two devices of the same kind and two examiners were available for performing comparative measurements. Regression analyses and an ANOVA were conducted to compare the devices, examiners, and different surfaces. Most of the floors differed significantly from each other. Sawdust was the softest material, followed by sand and recycled manure solids. The agreement between the devices (Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) > 0.99, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (rS) = 0.99) and examiners (CCC = 0.99, rS = 0.99) was almost perfect. These findings indicate that this device can be used as a new method for assessing the softness of bedding materials for dairy cows objectively.
