Automatic detection of lameness in dairy cows

For many years the methods used in human movement analysis have also been applied in animal research, especially on racehorses and cows in milk and meat production. In modern high tech barns with dairy cows the feeding and milking is controlled automatically by means of computerized sensor and robot technology. Consequently, rather few people are in contact with the cows on a daily basis, because the natural supervision of the animal, which was performed during manual milking, is eliminated. Therefore, humans rather seldom inspect the individual cow, and the animals developing leg and claw diseases and lameness are detected at a rather late stage. Since the leg diseases cause pain and reduced productivity, there is a large interest in the development of automatic detection of lameness in dairy cows, due to the potential economical gain in the production of milk. Accordingly, this project involves the development of software algorithms for automatic extraction of indicators of lameness in dairy cows from force and pressure data (force plate and pressure data) collected in high tech barns on a long term basis.