Experimenta l Assessment of Barneye Intelligent Farm Technology in Heat Stress
The hot summer is the high-incidence period of cow heat stress, regulated by various technical means. Besides providing her with more care in dairy management and nutrition improvement, physical environmental control technology also plays an essential role in reducing heat stress.
Intelligent farm technology makes the precise implementation of physical cooling mode possible, dramatically improves a farm's ability to control the barn environment comprehensively and provides a powerful tool for farms to standardize data and precision management.
To assess the effect of the Barneye intelligent environmental control system on heat stress abatement and promotion of lactation capacity compared with the soaking system with proximity sensors only, one experiment was carried out in Sunlon Jinyindao Dairy Farm, a typical natural ventilation barn in the north of China, in the year 2020.
Cattle with a gestation of 2.11 (P=0.98 between groups) and average lactation days of 118 days (P=0.99 between groups) were selected and put into two groups. The experiment will focus on comparing the milk yield difference and heavy breathing rate differences during the period of July 17 to August 7 in 2020 between the two groups when being soaked with the same soak cycle settings.
Ø Experimental group: Cows cooled by Barneye vision soaking with individual soak strategy(Cow herd No. 5 to 8)
Ø Contrast group: Cows cooled by proximity sensing soaking with group soak strategy (Cow herd No. 1 to 4)
Milk yield
The results showed that the average milk yield of the experimental group was 47.91kg from July 17 to August 7, while that of the contrast group was 43.93kg. Compared with the contrast group, the average daily milk yield for each cow of the experimental group was higher by 3.99kg, and the yield difference was highly significant during the test period (P < 0.01). The effect of the intelligent environmental control system is remarkable.
Group heavy breathing rate
When we zoom in and observe the daily statistics, the group heavy breathing rate of cows in the two groups on July 17 is significantly different. (source: Allflex).
The group's heavy breathing rate represents the percentage of cows in a particular group that exhibits heat-stress behaviour. The results showed that, on July 17, the rate in the contrast group was higher than 10% at around 2:00, 6:00, and 12:00-14:00, with the highest point being 21.9%. The experimental group's group heavy breathing rate was higher than 10% at 4:00 and 12:00-14:00, and the highest point was 14.9%. The experimental group had a noticeably lower heavy breathing rate and suffered less heat stress.
Through the successful application of the BARNEYE visual intelligence control system in a typical natural ventilated cow barn in the northern region of China, it is affirmative that intelligent farm technology can play a vital role in solving the heat stress of cows, effectively relieving the heat stress, meanwhile saving a massive amount of water and saving lots of power, reducing the loss of milk production during the heat stress, and bringing more economic benefits to the farm.
