Development of a new waterer automation system to measure and evaluate the individual water consumptions of dairy cows

Water, which forms a significant portion of body weights and milk contents, is a basic nutrient for dairy cow. In order to maintain maximum milk yield and animal comfort, it must be ensured that dairy each cow drinks enough water daily. At present, no data are not collected about dairy cows' daily individual water intake since dairy cows drink waters troughs altogether at the same time in dairy farms. The purposes of this doctoral thesis study were to develop an individual water intake automatic measurement system which would be used to determine the daily amount of individual water intakes of dairy cows, the time spent at the water troughs and the daily number of visits to waterers and determine its performance in a dairy farm's conditions. The developed individual water intake automatic measurement system sends wirelessly to a tablet computer via a RF transmitter / receiver module the ID number of the dairy cow coming for drinking water and its water intake measured by flow meter. After resolving the deficiencies met at the preliminary tests, three individual water intake automatic measuring systems were manufactured and the normal trial was continued for about seven months. The dairy cows which were diagnosed with mastitis were put on the trial area and taken out after three days following healing. Data were collected from 154 dairy cows with mastitis during the normal trial. Daily water intakes of dairy cows were measured and recorded electronically during their stays at the trial area. The individual daily water intakes, the daily total time spent at waterers and daily visits to waterers (water drinking frequency) of dairy cows were calculated from the collected experimental data. The individual water intakes of dairy cows varied between 23.83 l and 168.32 l, whereas their daily number of visits to waterers varied between 3 and 22 visits/day. The daily total time spent at waterers was between 12.51 and 34.43 minutes. In cases that dairy cows had mastitis, a partial decline trend in their daily water intakes occurred but there was no significant change in the numbers of visits to waterers. The multi linear perception (MLP) which was used to describe the relationship between experimental data had the accuracy of 79.43%.