| 1. |
- Alvåsen, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing short-term economic consequences of cow-calf contact systems in dairy production using a stochastic partial budgeting approach
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - 2673-6225. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction: While early separation of dairy calves after birth has been debated from an ethical and animal welfare lens, the economic evidence surrounding alternative cow-calf contact (CCC) systems is scarce.Methods: To address this knowledge gap, we assessed the economic consequences of CCC systems using data from the Agriwise database as well as parameters from published literature in a stochastic partial budget model. The implementation of CCC is very diverse between farms, so in our study we therefore selected a limited number of CCC systems to assess. The examined CCC systems were: (i) dam rearing with limited contact at milking (15 minutes twice a day for 115 days) with no manual milk feeding; (ii) dam rearing with 21-day full contact, after which calves are manually fed 8 kg of whole milk for 94 days; and (iii) mixed calf rearing with using both dams and foster cows with full contact; calves are initially kept with their dams and then moved to foster cows at 9 days of age.Results: We found that adoption of CCC systems was associated with decreases in contribution margins in the range of 1 to 5.4%, as compared to a rearing system where the calves were separated from their dams after one day and were manually fed 8 kg of milk for 12 weeks. These results illustrated that the costs associated with CCC systems may be fairly high under certain circumstances and may prohibit farmers from adopting this practice. Sensitivity analysis suggested that differences in milk sales, assumptions on changes in labor requirements, and changes in daily calf weight gain depending on CCC system were the main variables that governed the net impact on the contribution margins.Discussion: We did not include building costs in the analyses assuming that barn structures may not change in the short-term. The study focused only on short-term pecuniary associations between changes in CCC systems and contribution margins. To strengthen the economic decision-making around CCC systems, future research should consider non-monetary impacts of different CCC systems, as well as long-term economic impacts of these production strategies.
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| 2. |
- Blokhuis, Harry
(författare)
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Editorial: Animal welfare labelling
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 3. |
- Detmann, Edenio
(författare)
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Association of virginiamycin and multiple supplement for cattle fed a high-quality tropical forage
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of adding virginiamycin to either mineral mixture or multiple supplement on intake, digestion, ruminal fermentation profile, rumen microbial production, blood metabolites, and liver metabolism of zebu heifers fed a high-quality tropical forage. Eight Brahman heifers were assigned to a replicated 4 × 4 Latin Square design. The treatments were: mineral mixture, mineral mixture with virginiamycin, multiple supplement, and multiple supplement with virginiamycin. The basal diet consisted of a high-quality Tifton 85 hay (Cynodom sp.) chopped at 10-cm particle size and fed twice daily. The mineral mixture was provided daily at 120 g/animal. The multiple supplement was formulated to provide 300 g of crude protein (CP)/kg as fed, contained mineral mixture, corn grain, and urea: ammonium sulfate, and was daily provided at 200 g/animal. The mineral mixture and multiple supplement provided the same daily amount of minerals. The amount of supplemental virginiamycin was based on a maximum theoretical response on animal performance (50 mg/100 kg body weight) and daily mixed to the supplements types. The treatments were compared according to a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement (mineral mixture and multiple supplement, with or without virginiamycin). The virginiamycin supplementation did not alter either voluntary intake or digestibility (P≥0.44). Using the multiple supplement decreased forage (P<0.05) and digested organic matter (DOM, P<0.10) intake, but increased dietary CP : DOM ratio (P<0.01). The multiple supplement increased the ruminal ammonia concentration (P<0.04) and the acetate-to-propionate ratio (P<0.06). Virginiamycin increased urinary nitrogen (N) when provided along with multiple supplement (P<0.05). Fecal N was decreased by multiple supplement (P<0.06). Despite these effects, no effect was verified on either body N accretion (P≥0.48) or microbial N production in the rumen (P≥0.27). Virginiamycin decreased the blood IGF-1 (P<0.07). The hepatic gene expression for propionyl-CoA carboxylase was increased by virginiamycin (P<0.01). Virginiamycin increased the hepatic gene expression of both citrate synthase and pyrivate carboxylase when mineral mixture was provided (P<0.01), but decreased it when animals were fed multiple supplement (P<0.04). Using a low-intake multiple supplement with a high CP content for cattle fed high-quality forage causes a substitutive effect on forage intake, but keeps nitrogen accretion unchanged. That pattern indicates an improvement in feed efficiency. On the other hand, virginiamycin supplementation seems to cause some post-prandial influences, which may vary according to the type of supplement. Those influences apparently improve animal efficiency.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Guzhva, Oleksiy
(författare)
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Estimation of Resilience Parameters Following LPS Injection Based on Activity Measured With Computer Vision
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Resilience could be referred to as the animal's ability to successfully adapt to a challenge. This is typically displayed by a quick return to initial metabolic or activity levels and behaviors. Pigs have distinct diurnal activity patterns. Deviations from these patterns could potentially be utilized to quantify resilience. However, human observations of activity are labor intensive and not feasible in practice on a large scale. In this study, we show the use of a computer vision tracking algorithm to quantify resilience based on activity individual patterns following a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge, which induced a sickness response. We followed 121 individual pigs housed in barren or enriched housing systems, as previous work suggests an impact of housing on resilience, for eight days. The enriched housing consisted of delayed weaning in a group farrowing system and extra space compared with the barren pens and environmental enrichment. Enriched housed pigs were more active pre-injection of LPS, especially during peak activity times, than barren housed pigs (49.4 +/- 9.9 vs. 39.1 +/- 5.0 meter/hour). Four pigs per pen received an LPS injection and two pigs a saline injection. LPS injected animals were more likely to show a dip in activity than controls (86% vs 17%). Duration and Area Under the Curve (AUC) of the dip were not affected by housing. However, pigs with the same AUC could have a long and shallow dip or a steep and short dip. Therefore the AUC:duration ratio was calculated, and enriched housed pigs had a higher AUC:duration ratio compared to barren housed pigs (9244.1 +/- 5429.8 vs 5919.6 +/- 4566.1). Enriched housed pigs might therefore have a different strategy to cope with an LPS sickness challenge. However, more research on this strategy and the use of activity to quantify resilience and its relationship to physiological parameters is therefore needed.
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| 6. |
- Guzhva, Oleksiy, et al.
(författare)
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Hide ‘n seek: individual behavioural responses of cattle excreting different amounts of nematode eggs—potential threshold for pasture contamination assessment
- 2024
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - 2673-6225. ; 5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this study was to investigate how the activity of cattle under natural grazing conditions is related to their individual parasite contribution (IPC). Potentially, the individuals contributing the most to the contamination of the pasture with gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) could then be identified and selectively treated based on sensor data thresholds. A total of 58 steers of the dairy breeds Swedish Red (SR, n = 19) and Swedish Holstein (SH, n = 39) were used for sensor-based data collection that lasted for a total of 10 weeks from 4 May to 13 July 2022. All steers were inoculated with a priming dose of nematode larvae and weighed in conjunction with the pasture release. The animals were then divided into four experimental groups and treated with ivermectin (IVM PO, Boehringer Ingelheim, 0.5 mg/kg BW) at different intervals to obtain an exposure contrast (Group A was left untreated, Group B/IVM PO-4w was treated after 4 weeks, Group C/IVM PO-8w was treated after 8 weeks, and Group D/IVM PO-4&8w was treated after 4 weeks and then after 8 weeks). The steers were weighed on four further occasions, during which faecal samples were also taken for parasite testing. Activity data were collected using leg-mounted IceQube sensors and body weight data and faecal samples were collected bi-weekly. The new threshold metric (IPC) was proposed for individuals with different faecal egg count (FEC) levels [NO (no contribution) <20 EPG, LO (low contribution) = 20–150 EPG, ME (medium contribution) = 150–250 EPG, and HI (high contribution) ≥250 EPG] The effects of IPC on activity patterns were analysed stepwise using a Generalised Estimating Equations model implemented in Python programming language. Results showed significant effects of different IPC values on motion index and number of steps taken (adjusted p-value of 0.008, 0.018, 0.041, and 0.001 for individuals with NO, LO, ME, and HI IPC values, respectively). There were some breed effects on the average number of steps and minutes spent lying. The results also provide alternative threshold methods aimed at finding more sustainable ways of using anthelmintics and integrating individual data into future parasite control strategies.
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| 7. |
- Guzhva, Oleksiy
(författare)
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Individual detection and tracking of group housed pigs in their home pen using computer vision
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Modern welfare definitions not only require that the Five Freedoms are met, but animals should also be able to adapt to changes (i. e., resilience) and reach a state that the animals experience as positive. Measuring resilience is challenging since relatively subtle changes in animal behavior need to be observed 24/7. Changes in individual activity showed potential in previous studies to reflect resilience. A computer vision (CV) based tracking algorithm for pigs could potentially measure individual activity, which will be more objective and less time consuming than human observations. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of state-of-the-art CV algorithms for pig detection and tracking for individual activity monitoring in pigs. This study used a tracking-by-detection method, where pigs were first detected using You Only Look Once v3 (YOLOv3) and in the next step detections were connected using the Simple Online Real-time Tracking (SORT) algorithm. Two videos, of 7 h each, recorded in barren and enriched environments were used to test the tracking. Three detection models were proposed using different annotation datasets: a young model where annotated pigs were younger than in the test video, an older model where annotated pigs were older than the test video, and a combined model where annotations from younger and older pigs were combined. The combined detection model performed best with a mean average precision (mAP) of over 99.9% in the enriched environment and 99.7% in the barren environment. Intersection over Union (IOU) exceeded 85% in both environments, indicating a good accuracy of the detection algorithm. The tracking algorithm performed better in the enriched environment compared to the barren environment. When false positive tracks where removed (i.e., tracks not associated with a pig), individual pigs were tracked on average for 22.3 min in the barren environment and 57.8 min in the enriched environment. Thus, based on proposed tracking-by-detection algorithm, pigs can be tracked automatically in different environments, but manual corrections may be needed to keep track of the individual throughout the video and estimate activity. The individual activity measured with proposed algorithm could be used as an estimate to measure resilience.
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| 8. |
- Guzhva, Oleksiy, et al.
(författare)
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to Integration of Social and Ethical Awareness in Precision Livestock Farming Research
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While fully automated livestock production may be considered the ultimate goal for optimising productivity at the farm level, the benefits and costs of such a development at the scale at which it needs to be implemented must also be considered from social and ethical perspectives. Automation resulting from Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) could alter fundamental views of human-animal interactions on farm and, even further, potentially compromise human and animal welfare and health if PLF development does not include a flexible, holistic strategy for integration. To investigate topic segregation, inclusion of socio-ethical aspects, and consideration of human-animal interactions within the PLF research field, the abstracts from 644 peer-reviewed publications were analysed using the recent advances in the Natural Language Processing (NLP). Two Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) probabilistic models with varying number of topics (13 and 3 for Model 1 and Model 2, respectively) were implemented to create a generalised research topic overview. The visual representation of topics produced by LDA Model 1 and Model 2 revealed prominent similarities in the terms contributing to each topic, with only weight for each term being different. The majority of terms for both models were process-oriented, obscuring the inclusion of social and ethical angles in PLF publications. A subset of articles (5%, n = 32) was randomly selected for manual examination of the full text to evaluate whether abstract text and focus reflected that of the article as a whole. Few of these articles (12.5%, n = 4) focused specifically on broader ethical or societal considerations of PLF or (9.4%, n = 3) discussed PLF with respect to human-animal interactions. While there was consideration of the impact of PLF on animal welfare and farmers in nearly half of the full texts examined (46.9%, n = 15), this was often limited to a few statements in passing. Further, these statements were typically general rather than specific and presented PLF as beneficial to human users and animal recipients. To develop PLF that is in keeping with the ethical values and societal concerns of the public and consumers, projects, and publications that deliberately combine social context with technological processes and results are needed.
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| 9. |
- Hessle, Anna
(författare)
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Classification of behaviors of free-ranging cattle using accelerometry signatures collected by virtual fence collars
- 2023
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Animal Science. - 2673-6225. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Precision farming technology, including GPS collars with biologging, has revolutionized remote livestock monitoring in extensive grazing systems. High resolution accelerometry can be used to infer the behavior of an animal. Previous behavioral classification studies using accelerometer data have focused on a few key behaviors and were mostly conducted in controlled situations. Here, we conducted behavioral observations of 38 beef cows (Hereford, Limousine, Charolais, Simmental/NRF/Hereford mix) free-ranging in rugged, forested areas, and fitted with a commercially available virtual fence collar (Nofence) containing a 10Hz tri-axial accelerometer. We used random forest models to calibrate data from the accelerometers on both commonly documented (e.g., feeding, resting, walking) and rarer (e.g., scratching, head butting, self-grooming) behaviors. Our goal was to assess pre-processing decisions including different running mean intervals (smoothing window of 1, 5, or 20 seconds), collar orientation and feature selection (orientation-dependent versus orientation-independent features). We identified the 10 most common behaviors exhibited by the cows. Models based only on orientation-independent features did not perform better than models based on orientation-dependent features, despite variation in how collars were attached (direction and tightness). Using a 20 seconds running mean and orientation-dependent features resulted in the highest model performance (model accuracy: 0.998, precision: 0.991, and recall: 0.989). We also used this model to add 11 rarer behaviors (each< 0.1% of the data; e.g. head butting, throwing head, self-grooming). These rarer behaviors were predicted with less accuracy because they were not observed at all for some individuals, but overall model performance remained high (accuracy, precision, recall >98%). Our study suggests that the accelerometers in the Nofence collars are suitable to identify the most common behaviors of free-ranging cattle. The results of this study could be used in future research for understanding cattle habitat selection in rugged forest ranges, herd dynamics, or responses to stressors such as carnivores, as well as to improve cattle management and welfare.
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| 10. |
- Keeling, Linda
(författare)
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Towards a positive welfare protocol for cattle: A critical review of indicators and suggestion of how we might proceed
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in animal science. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2673-6225. ; 2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Current animal welfare protocols focus on demonstrating the absence (or at least low levels) of indicators of poor welfare, potentially creating a mismatch between what is expected by society (an assurance of good animal welfare) and what is actually being delivered (an assurance of the absence of welfare problems). This paper explores how far we have come, and what work still needs to be done, if we are to develop a protocol for use on commercial dairy farms where the aim is to demonstrate the presence of positive welfare. Following conceptual considerations around a perceived “ideal” protocol, we propose that a future protocol should be constructed (i) of animal-based measures, (ii) of indicators of affective state, and (iii) be structured according to indicators of short-term emotion, medium-term moods and long-term cumulative assessment of negative and positive experiences of an animal's life until now (in contrast to the current focus on indicators that represent different domains/criteria of welfare). These three conditions imposed the overall structure within which we selected our indicators. The paper includes a critical review of the literature on potential indicators of positive affective states in cattle. Based on evidence about the validity and reliability of the different indicators, we select ear position, play, allogrooming, brush use and QBA as candidate indicators that we suggest could form a prototype positive welfare protocol. We emphasise that this prototype protocol has not been tested in practice and so it is perhaps not the protocol itself that is the main outcome of this paper, but the process of trying to develop it. In a final section of this paper, we reflect on some of the lessons learnt from this exercise and speculate on future perspectives. For example, while we consider we have moved towards a prototype positive welfare protocol for short-term affective states, future research energy should be directed towards valid indicators for the medium and long-term.
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