Associations of Behavior and Production Disease in Dairy Cattle

Dairy cattle need to devote sufficient time each day to eating, drinking, ruminating, and resting to maintain good health and production. There is mounting empirical evidence that monitoring of behavior can be used to predict and identify health and welfare concerns in dairy cattle. Interest in the association between dairy cow behavior and illness is growing, particularly with an increasing availability of commercially available equipment that is readily available for the automated monitoring of dairy cow behavior. These technologies provide ready access to vast quantities of accurate and repeatable measures of behavior. Thus, with such technologies, there are new opportunities for the automation detection (through identification and prediction) of health concerns in dairy cattle, potentially allowing for better prevention and treatment protocols to be implemented. This chapter reviews how various cow behaviors, in particular, eating, resting, and ruminating, have been associated with various production diseases, as well as reviews some of the technologies available and their application, both current and future, that may be used to improve cow health and welfare, at a cow and herd level.