Attaining reproductive solutions through activity monitoring

Today’s activity monitoring systems do much more than just identify cow/heifer for insemination. The addition of rumination monitoring allows the identification of health events along with reproductive events. Performance of automated activity monitoring (AAM) systems in combination with timed artificial insemination (TAI) compared to TAI exclusively has been widely researched and adopted. Detecting a high percentage of cows in estrus is essential to maintain reproductive performance in dairy herds using AI. The Dairy Records Management Systems reported a mean yearly estrus detection rate on 8,749 US Holstein herds (including all reproductive management strategies) as 46.5% in January of 2018.1

Automated activity monitoring technologies are an available alternative to supplement or replace visual estrus detection. Parameters with potential for AAM include mounting events, activity level, lying time, rumination and eating times, feeding events, progesterone levels, body temperature, and more ...