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Abstract:
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Body weight is an important indicator of milk yield, fertility, lameness, and overall health in dairy cows. It is beneficial to monitor herd members to ensure that they are not underweight, overweight, or experiencing unexpected changes in weight. Although body weight is an important measure for herd management, it is not commonly utilized by the dairy industry due to burdens and labor costs associated with traditional means of assessment. In this work, we consider an apparatus which measures forces and accelerations created by a cow's gait, and has been designed for convenient use in the daily routine of a commercial dairy farm. We explore the use of statistical methods to predict a cow's static scale weight using the multivariate functional data recorded when the cow walks through the machine.
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