Rumination and activity levels as predictors of calving for dairy cows.

The Australian dairy herd size has doubled over the last 20 years substantially increasing the time that farmers require forindividual animal attention to monitor and intervene with events such as calving. Technology will help focus this limited labourresource on individual cows that require assistance. The objective of this experiment was tofirst determine the profiles ofrumination duration and level of activity as determined by sensors between, and within, days around calving and second to usethese data to predict the day of calving for pasture-based dairy cows. After 2 weeks from the expected calving date, 27 cows werefitted with SCR HR LD Tags, located in 40×90m