Using Advanced Technologies to Quantify Cattle Behavior

For many decades, we have relied upon visual observation of animal behavior to define clinical disease, assist in breeding selection and predict growth performance. Limitations of visual monitoring of cattle behavior include training of personnel, subjectivity, and brevity; however, extensive time and labor is required to monitor behavior in a large number of animals. Furthermore, the prey instinct of cattle to disguise abnormal behaviors in the presence of a human evaluator is problematic. More recently, cattle behavior has been quantified objectively and continuously using advanced technologies to assess animal welfare, indicate lameness or disease, and detect estrus in both production and research settings. Some of these technologies include 3-axis accelerometers that quantify physical activity, systems that document feeding and watering behavior via radio frequency, and triangulation or global positioning systems to determine location and movement of cattle within a pen or pasture. Advances in Wi-Fi and radio frequency technology have allowed many of these systems to operate in real-time and efforts are underway to develop commercial applications that may allow early detection of respiratory or other cattle diseases in the production environment. Current challenges with commercial application of technology for early disease detection include establishment of an appropriate algorithm to ensure maximum sensitivity and specificity, cost benefit, and infringement of traditional methodology for clinical diagnosis. Advanced technologies have also allowed researchers to determine temporal variance in behavior or variability between experimental treatments. Specifically, we have used 3-axis accelerometers to continuously record standing and lying duration, step count, lying bouts and motion index generated in 15 min intervals. Our research efforts include effects of castration method and timing, weaning method, transportation, beta-adrenergic agonist feeding, and bovine respiratory disease on physical behavior in cattle. Benchmark activity data will also be discussed for cattle fed in confinement and during transport and lairage at a commercial beef processor.