novel approaches to expression and detection of oestrus in dairy cows

CHAPTER 4 – Development of a Novel Technology for
the Purpose of Oestrous Detection
4.1 INTRODUCTION
Detection of oestrus is a key determinant of profitability of dairy herds
(Pecsok et al., 1994). At present oestrous detection rates are only 50%
(DairyCo, 2009) but have the potential to be much higher with appropriate
methods of oestrous detection, reaching the current herd target of above
70% (DairyCo, 2009). Therefore there is a clear opportunity in the market
for development of a novel technology for the purpose of oestrous
detection.
Traditionally oestrous detection was performed just by visual observation,
although due to increasing herd sizes and decreasing oestrous expression,
this method although most accurate, is now less successful and inefficient.
Currently oestrous detection is moving towards automated technologies
that analyse the traits being measured, with the aim to accurately and
efficiently detect oestrus according to the criteria set out by Senger (1994).
Many automated technologies have been reviewed (Firk et al., 2002;Rorie
et al., 2002;Roelofs et al., 2010), with the most common and successful at
present being pedometry/ activity monitoring (At-Taras and Spahr, 2001).
However, activity monitoring has its limitations and may only increase
oestrous detection rates by 10-12% (DairyCo, 2009).
In order to detect cows that are standing to be mounted and cows that are
mounting, to accurately detect oestrus it will be necessary to employ a
novel technique such as ubiquitous positioning. Ubiquitous positioning is a
technology to locate people, objects or both, anytime, whether indoors or
outdoors or moving between the two. The subject must be located at
predefined location accuracies which can be aided by the support of one or
more location-sensing devices and associated infrastructure to assist
definition of coordinates (Meng et al., 2007). Many approaches to precision
positioning are able to define the subject’s location although they vary in
their suitability for use to monitor oestrus in dairy cows.
Ubiquitous positioning mainly focuses on global navigation satellite systems
(GNSS), including GPS (US), GALILEO (EU), GLONASS (Russia) and
Compass (China) which are capable of 3D positioning. Single receiver
GNSS is capable of accuracies ranging from a few metres to tens of metres
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