Beacon in Information System as Way of Supporting Identification of Cattle Behavior

Abstract

The paper concentrates on researching the possibilities of using modern information technologies in animal production in order to monitor and identify behavior and well-being of cows. Having in mind the challenges related to managing dairy herds, and economic pressure put on breeders (as well as the broadly defined well-being of animals), an endeavor was made to create a new method, which would be competitive in comparison with the existing solutions. The proposed method of collecting data and data processing with beacon devices as well as data warehouse, allows—according to the authors—a more complete identification of behaviors and physiological condition of a dairy herd. It is also worth pointing out that this method is competitive in terms of price. By virtue of the multitude of data that were collected, a decision was made to resign from processing data on a local computer and use a cloud compute engine instead. The presented information system creates a sequence of components, which were subject to verification both on the level of creating and conducting research. Research results that were received were then compared with knowledge presented in the literature. A vital element of validation of the aforementioned methodology was comparing results that were achieved in the course of research work with the system making use of pedometer. The aim of the authors was to develop a new information technology solution, as well as a method based on beacons, which are rather universal devices, with the use of data warehouses, allowing the identification of behavior and physiological state of milk cattle, the method which would be competitive in comparison with the existing solutions, especially in terms of price. In the proposed solution, both information coming from microcomputers and weather forecast data coming from weather forecast stations, which make the above identification easy, were used as data sources.

Animal welfare assessment

“…BCS was significantly affected by breed (p = 0.0048, F(Dfn, DFd) = 5.598 (2,115)) and chronic lameness (p = 0.002, F(Dfn, DFd) = 9.974 (1,115)), but not by age (p = 0.4029), REM sleep deficiency (p = 0.0686), sex (p = 0.1784), pasture access (p = 0.6774), bedding (p = 0.5547), or housing (p = 0.1634) conditions.…”

“…An idea worthy of attention is the use of beacons-microcontrollers equipped with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) transmitters in pig farming as devices used to identify behaviour and physiological condition. Studies on these systems have been successfully carried on cattle, although the difference in the daily behaviour of cows and pigs is important [115]. Table 1 summarises the advantages and disadvantages of equipment used in precision pig farming.…”