Validation of a commercial automated body condition scoring system on a commercial dairy farm

Abstract

3.75) or low (<3.00) BCS scores compared to manual scorers. A Bland–Altman plot was constructed which demonstrated a bias in the high and low automated BCS scoring. The initial findings show that the BCS camera system provides accurate BCS between 3.00 to 3.75 but tends to be inaccurate at determining the magnitude of low and high BCS scores. However, the results are promising, as an automated system may encourage more producers to adopt BCS into their practices to detect early signs of BCS change for individual cattle. Future algorithm and software development is likely to increase the accuracy in automated BCS scoring.