Novel Monitoring Systems to Obtain Dairy Cattle Phenotypes Associated With Sustainable Production

Abstract

Improvements in production efficiencies and profitability of products from cattle are of great interest to farmers. Furthermore, improvements in production efficiencies associated with feed utilization and fitness traits have also been shown to reduce the environmental impact of cattle systems, which is of great importance to society. The aim of this paper was to discuss selected novel monitoring systems to measure dairy cattle phenotypic traits that are considered to bring more sustainable production with increased productivity and reduced environmental impact through reduced greenhouse gas emissions. With resource constraints and high or fluctuating commodity prices the agricultural industry has seen a growing need by producers for efficiency savings (and innovation) to reduce waste and costs associated with production. New data obtained using fast, in some cases real-time, and affordable objective measures are becoming more readily available to aid farm level monitoring, awareness, and decision making. These objective measures may additionally provide an accurate and repeatable method for improving animal health and welfare, and phenotypes for selecting animals. Such new data sources include image analysis and further data-driven technologies (e.g., infrared spectra, gas analysis), which bring non-invasive methods to obtain animal phenotypes (e.g., enteric methane, feed utilization, health, fertility, and behavioral traits) on commercial farms; this information may have been costly or not possible to obtain previously. Productivity and efficiency gains often move largely in parallel and thus bringing more sustainable systems.