Search Results (4)

Adopting a new milking system at a dairy farm causes various changes. This study examined the impact on udder health when changing from a conventional milking system to an automatic milking system. For this purpose, quarter milk samples were taken six times from 138 cows at one conventional dairy farm in Northern Germany over a five-week period around the time of the milking system changeover. To assess udder health, the absolute number of new intramammary infections and the causative pathogen genera and species were analysed for each individual study time point. Pathogen species were detected using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-of-flight, and the infection dynamics were analysed using two Poisson regression models. In addition, the prevalence and incidence of new intramammary infections and the infection dynamics of the four most frequently isolated pathogen species were calculated. Mixed models were used to determine the development of the new infection rate, the somatic cell count, the teat-end condition, and the udder hygiene between the individual study time points and to compare the new infection rate before and after the changeover of the milking system. After the automatic milking system had been installed, a significant increase in the quarter-level somatic cell count occurred (p < 0.001). Two days before the installation of the automatic milking system, the mean quarter-level somatic cell count was 11,940 cells/mL milk; one sampling date later, 8 days after the changeover, a mean quarter-level somatic cell count of 60,117 cells/mL milk was measured. The significant increase in somatic cell count was probably caused by the time between the last milking and the quarter milk sampling. Additionally, significantly more udders were scored as clean 8 days (95%) and 15 days (96%) after the changeover of the milking system compared to at the last sampling date (88%). Also, significantly more teat ends were classified as free of hyperkeratosis 15 days (80%) compared to 22 days (67%) after the changeover of the milking system. The highest number of absolute new intramammary infections was detected 8 days before the transition of the milking system (28.6%). The lowest number of absolute new intramammary infections occurred 8 days after the change to the automatic milking system (11.0%). Minor mastitis pathogens, such as non-aureus staphylococci and coryneform bacteria, were mainly responsible for the development of new intramammary infections. The most frequently isolated pathogen species were Staphylococcus sciuri, Staphylococcus chromogenes, Staphylococcus haemolyticus, and Corynebacterium amycolatum, with a prevalence of up to 23.9, 10.7, 8.4, and 5.3%, respectively. By comparing the new infection rate before and after the changeover of the milking system, it was possible to establish that the changeover to the automatic milking system had no significant influence on the new intramammary infection rate (p = 0.988). Therefore, this trial confirmed that the changeover from a conventional milking system to an automatic milking system had no negative influence on udder health. Full article

A novel method of monitoring the health of dairy cows in large-scale dairy farms is proposed via image-based analysis of cows on rotary-based milking platforms, where deep learning is used to classify the extent of teat-end hyperkeratosis. The videos can be analyzed to segment the teats for feature analysis, which can then be used to assess the risk of infections and other diseases. This analysis can be performed more efficiently by using the key frames of each cow as they pass through the image frame. Extracting key frames from these videos would greatly simplify this analysis, but there are several challenges. First, data collection in the farm setting is harsh, resulting in unpredictable temporal key frame positions; empty, obfuscated, or shifted images of the cow’s teats; frequently empty stalls due to challenges with herding cows into the parlor; and regular interruptions and reversals in the direction of the parlor. Second, supervised learning requires expensive and time-consuming human annotation of key frames, which is impractical in large commercial dairy farms housing thousands of cows. Unsupervised learning methods rely on large frame differences and often suffer low performance. In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised few-shot learning model which extracts key frames from large (∼21,000 frames) video streams. Using a simple L1 distance metric that combines both image and deep features between each unlabeled frame and a few (32) labeled key frames, a key frame selection mechanism, and a quality check process, key frames can be extracted with sufficient accuracy (F score 63.6%) and timeliness (<10 min per 21,000 frames) for commercial dairy farm setting demands. Full article

Teat-end health assessments are crucial to maintain milk quality and dairy cow health. One approach to automate teat-end health assessments is by using a convolutional neural network to classify the magnitude of teat-end alterations based on digital images. This approach has been demonstrated as feasible with GoogLeNet but there remains a number of challenges, such as low performance and comparing performance with different ImageNet models. In this paper, we present a separable confident transductive learning (SCTL) model to improve the performance of teat-end image classification. First, we propose a separation loss to ameliorate the inter-class dispersion. Second, we generate high confident pseudo labels to optimize the network. We further employ transductive learning to narrow the gap between training and test datasets with categorical maximum mean discrepancy loss. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SCTL model consistently achieves higher accuracy across all seventeen different ImageNet models when compared with retraining of original approaches. Full article

In a foster cow system, one or more calves are reared by a foster cow. With regard to the growing rejection towards the early separation of cow and calf after calving, such alternative rearing methods with prolonged cow–calf contact are coming more into focus. Nevertheless, there is a lack of recent studies investigating the effects of suckling multiple calves on the udder health of a foster cow. The present study aimed to initially describe the status and development of the udder condition and the microbial colonisation during the foster period. Thereby, the objectives were to determine whether suckling multiple calves was associated with an increase in intramammary infections (IMI) and a deterioration of udder constitution. A total of 99 Holstein Friesian foster cows from a large organic dairy farm in eastern Germany were included in this pilot study. Each foster cow was suckled by 3–4 calves and not additionally milked. Quarter milk samples were taken for cytomicrobiological examination at the beginning and end of the approximately 3.5 months suckling period. At the same time, the udders of 91 of these foster cows were clinically examined by visual assessment and manual palpation. In both the first and second examination (E1 and E2, respectively), Corynebacterium ssp. and non-aureus staphylococci (NaS) constituted the most frequently detected pathogen species in the 385 examined udder quarters. Classifying the quarters into mastitis categories was significantly different between the two examinations (p = 0.001). The number of quarters considered as healthy increased from E1 to E2 by 8.5%. At the same time, the number of quarters with mastitis decreased by 2.6%, the number of quarters with non-specific mastitis by 11.4% and the number of quarters with a latent infection increased by 5.4%. In total, 69.4% of the 121 infected udder quarters in E1 were bacteriologically cured in E2. A cytological cure was achieved in 28.1% of the 385 quarters. Both the bacteriological and cytological cure rate were spontaneous. A new infection occurred in 23.1% of the 385 examined udder quarters and was mainly attributable to infections with Corynebacterium spp. and NaS. During the suckling period, mainly new infections occurred and amounted to 73% in relation to presumed persistent infections (18.9%). The new infections were mainly attributable to infections with Corynebacterium spp. and NaS. Pasteurella spp. were also found in high percentages. A total of 10.1% of the quarters showed an increase in somatic cell count (SCC) above the threshold of 100,000 cells/mL from E1 to E2, indicating a new subclinical mastitis. Regarding udder condition, significant changes during the foster period were an increase in udder skin and teat lesions, a decrease in udder oedema, an increased amount of udder quarters with a consistency considered as normal and an increase in the number of udders showing no sign of udder cleft dermatitis. Moreover, teat length, circumference, and diameter increased significantly (p < 0.05). In conclusion, there is a possibility that suckling multiple calves improves udder health in terms of mastitis but leads to an increased pathogen transmission at the same time, resulting in an increase in latent infections. Additionally, pathogens as Pasteurella spp., which are usually located in the upper respiratory system, could be detected in the mammary gland. The changes concerning the udder condition were manifold. However, it has not yet been conclusively clarified whether all these changes are exclusively due to calf suckling. Further investigations with a non-suckled control group are required. Full article