A Study on Detection and Tracking of Estrous Behaviors for Cattle Using Laser Range Sensor and Video Camera

Nowadays, the methodology of cattle production has been transferred from natural mating to artificial insemination. Therefore, estrous detection for cattle is very important to determine the time period that farmers conduct artificial insemination. However, the observation of estrous behavior by human’s eyes through the whole day become as a burden task when the number of cattle is large. Therefore, most farmers are missing to notice estrous behavior. In this paper, we proposed the method for automated detection of cattle’s estrous behavior, which is mounting and standing, by using laser range sensor and image processing technology. Some experiments are carried out at the Sumiyoshi field, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Miyazaki. Through experimental results, the effectiveness of our proposed method was confirmed.