Shelley A N, Lau D L, Stone A E, Bewley J M
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40546.
Department of Animal and Food Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40546.
J Dairy Sci. 2016 Jan;99(1):386-91. doi: 10.3168/jds.2014-8964. Epub 2015 Nov 5.
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.
每头奶牛的采食量与每头奶牛的健康状况和生产产出密切相关，健康奶牛通常比不健康奶牛采食更多的饲料。采用自动化系统监测每头奶牛的饲料消耗量可能有助于奶牛场管理。本研究考察了使用一种价格低廉的三维摄像机来测量饲料体积，并由此得出饲料重量。进行了概念验证测试，以确定机器视觉饲料扫描系统的有效性和能力，以及其在采食量监测中的可能用途。此类系统很理想，因为它们不会妨碍农场的工作流程或干扰采食行为。这是对现有劳动强度大且成本高的系统的一种改进。我们进行的实验包括测量已知重量（最高达22.68千克）的饲料体积，并通过线性和二次最小二乘t检验回归分析对所得的体积和重量值进行分析。还考察了饲料在料仓中的位置以及近程传感器局限性的影响。结果表明，使用数字秤通过对体积测量进行三维扫描来估算饲料重量，其结果与实际测量的饲料重量相差不超过0.5千克。未来的工作将集中于把这项工作扩展到有多头奶牛全天采食的活动畜栏，并测试不同组成的全混合日粮。
