1. Short communication: Measuring feed volume and weight by machine vision
- Author
-
Daniel L. Lau, A.E. Stone, J.M. Bewley, and Anthony N. Shelley
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Feed consumption ,Machine vision ,computer.software_genre ,03 medical and health sciences ,Automation ,Animal science ,Feeding behavior ,Genetics ,Animals ,Dairy farming ,Mathematics ,Body Weight ,0402 animal and dairy science ,Regression analysis ,04 agricultural and veterinary sciences ,Feeding Behavior ,040201 dairy & animal science ,Animal Feed ,Volume measurements ,Dairying ,030104 developmental biology ,Volume (thermodynamics) ,Animal Science and Zoology ,Cattle ,Female ,Data mining ,computer ,Food Science - Abstract
Individual dairy cow feed intake is closely related to the health and productive output of each cow, with healthy cows generally eating more feed than unhealthy cows. Incorporating the use of an automated system to monitor feed consumption for each cow may be beneficial for dairy farm management. This study examined the use of an inexpensive 3-dimensional video camera to measure feed volume, from which we derived feed weight. Proof-of-concept testing was conducted to determine the effectiveness and capability of the machine vision feed-scanning system and its possible use in feed intake monitoring. Such systems are ideal because they do not impede the workflow of the farm or interrupt feeding behavior. This is an improvement over existing systems that are labor and cost intensive. Our conducted experiments involve measuring feed volume at known weights, up to 22.68 kg, with the resulting volume and weight values analyzed by means of linear and quadratic least squares t-test regression analysis. The effects of feed positioning in the bin and near-range sensor limitations were also examined. The results showed that an estimation of feed weight from 3-dimensional scan of volume measurements could be made to within 0.5 kg of the physically measured feed weight using a digital scale. Future efforts will focus on extending this work to active bunks with multiple cows eating throughout the day and testing total mixed rations of varied composition.
- Published
- 2014