Abstract
Monitoring the growth and body condition of cows is essential for optimal management of modern dairy farms. However, monitoring is rarely performed on commercial farms. Modern technologies based on three-dimensional (3D) shape analysis could address this problem. The objective of the present study was to test and validate tools that can record and analyze 3D body shapes of animals. On 30 Holstein dairy cows, wither height (WH), heart girth (HG), chest depth (CD), hip width (HW), backside width (BaW) and ischial width (IW) were manually measured. These manual measurements were compared to those measured with a scanner (Morpho3D) that provided 3D images of the entire cow body. Correlations between manual and Morpho3D measurements were high: 0.89 for CD, 0.82 for HW, 0.78 for HG, 0.76 for BaW, 0.63 for IW and 0.62 for WH. The mean coefficient of variation of reproducibility for Morpho3D was 2.8%. Future development can provide new opportunities for dairy herd management based on determining animal body volume and surface area.
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