Automated measurement of lying behavior for monitoring the comfort and welfare of lactating dairy cows

Behavioral monitoring may be useful to assess the welfare, state of health and comfort of farm animals. Lying behavior is often used as an indication of well-being in cattle and for evaluating the stall quality. The use of electronic data loggers to automate behavioral recording has become increasingly common. We tested the use of the Pedometer Plus tag (S.A.E. Afikim, Israel) for measuring the lying behavior of dairy cattle (n=18 lactating cows). Behavior was recorded for 11 days with the Pedometer Plus tag, from which the rest bout, bout duration and rest time were calculated. The lying behavior was simultaneously recorded using a HOBO Pendant G logger as a reference system to validate the Pedometer Plus tag. A linear regression analysis between the measurement methods showed that the recorded lying time (R2≥0.948) and the recorded number of lying bouts (R2≥0.718) were closely related, which was also confirmed by the comparison of the means (lying time, P=0.60; lying bouts, P=0.72). Despite the positive relationship, in some days, slope and intercept were statistically different from 1 and 0, respectively. The recordings of lying time and the number of lying bouts between the devices, for some cows, differed by more than 5%. The Pedometer Plus tag overestimates the number of lying bouts and underestimates the time that cows spend lying down with respect to HOBO pendant G logger recording. The different sampling, editing and filtering methods between devices may contribute to these discrepancies. This system will be advantageous for the reliable, 24 h/d automated recording of individual animals in a herd. This system reduces the difficulty of performing continuous measurements of behavior for a large number of animals over a prolonged period of time. In summary, the Pedometer Plus tag is likely a useful tool for the measurement of lying behavior in dairy cows.