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Date Available

4-11-2019

Year of Publication

2019

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College

Agriculture, Food and Environment

Department/School/Program

Animal and Food Sciences

Faculty

Dr. Joao Costa

Faculty

Dr. David L. Harmon

Abstract

Precision dairy technologies (PDT) are becoming more accessible and are therefore becoming more common on commercial dairy farms and in dairy research. Prior to any use of PDT, one should understand the precision, accuracy and bias of the device by a validations studies before interpreting the behavior measurements. Thus, the objective of the first section of my thesis is to validate ruminating, feeding and resting measurements of a behavior monitoring collar used in the second section. Precision dairy technology is used in heat stress studies to compare behavior of cows exposed to different heat stress treatments or abatement strategies. Heat stress is an important issue to research because it negatively affects cow behavior, physiology, and therefore production in lactating dairy cows. The objective of the second section is to assess the ability of a free choice soaker to reduce heat stress measured utilizing PDT and compare use of a free choice to a soaker in addition to one of the two treatments 1) no mandatory soakings, or 2) two mandatory soakings.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2019.055

Funding Information

The masters program was funded by DairyMaster (Co. Kerry, Ireland), through a research project partnership with the Dairy Science Program at the University of Kentucky.

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