Abstract
The monitoring system can automatically collect the quantitative data of the feeding behavior and feed intake of individual cattle, and the immediate response system always records many non-eating visits. Increasing response time of trigger helps to decrease recording non-eating visits, but may also miss some small periods of recording feed intake. This study was to evaluate the effect of response time in monitoring system on the accuracy of recording individual feeding behavior and feed intake in dairy cows. The first experiment was to investigate the distribution of 10-h feeding behaviors of 8 Holstein dairy cows after morning feeding by using infra-red camera. The second experiment was to investigate accuracy of feed intake recorded by the monitoring system with different response times (0.3, 3, 6, 12 and 24 s) in comparison with direct weighting. The third experiment was to investigate effect of excluding the data of time interval after response time on feed intake and visiting behaviors recorded by the monitoring system, when response time was set as 0.3 s. The results showed that the most of eating and non-eating visits had duration larger than 24 s (99.0 %) and less than 24 s (65.3 %), respectively. Comparing with actual feed intake obtained by direct weighting, increasing response time greatly increased the recorded feed intake, with the greatest difference occurring at 6 s of response time (P = 0.001). Although increasing time interval after response time linearly increased mean, median feed intake per visit and 10-h feed intake (P < 0.01), it had little influence on 10-h feed intake (< 0.1 %) and eating visit (< 5%). In summary, setting 0.3 s of response time in monitoring system helps to get actual feed intake, but can obtain a lot of non-eating visits. Increasing response time helps to decrease the recording of non-eating visits, but can overestimate feed intake.
Highlights
Feeding behavior refers to the behaviors related to obtaining and consuming feed, and is an interesting area of research which links the nutritional and behavioral sciences
These results clearly indicate that feeding strategy can greatly influence distribution of visit behaviors in dairy cow
These results indicated that response time with less than 24 s may have little effect on the accuracy of recording the number of eating visits, but can have great influence on the accuracy of recording the number of non-eating visits
Summary
Feeding behavior refers to the behaviors related to obtaining and consuming feed, and is an interesting area of research which links the nutritional and behavioral sciences. The advent of monitoring system has enabled the collection of detailed, objective, quantitative data on the feeding behavior and feed intake of individual cattle [11]. The immediate response system always record many non-eating visits due to the accidental trigger of the cow, but can obtain actual feed intake. The advent of monitoring system can automatically collect the quantitative data of the feeding behavior and feed intake of individual cattle, and the immediate response system always records many non-eating visits. This study was to evaluate the effect of response time in monitoring system on the accuracy of recording individual feeding behavior and feed intake in dairy cows. The third experiment was to investigate effect of excluding the data of time interval after response time on feed intake and visiting behaviors recorded by the monitoring system, when responding time was set as 0.3 s
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