A system for contact-free measurement of respiration rate of dairy cows

Abstract

We have developed a system for contact-free respiration rate measurement of dairy cows, which can be used in a milking robot, milking parlour or a tie-stall. The system consists of a laser distance sensor that is used for measuring the movement of cow’s side, data acquisition card and a PDA for logging the measurement data. The respiration rate is then extracted from the filtered sensor data with Welch’s method. The results show an indication that e.g. the stress caused by prolonged automatic milking interval because of a maintenance break can be seen as increased respiration rate.