Cow body shape and automation of condition scoring.

The feasibility of including a body shape measure in methods for automatic monitoring of body reserves of cattle was evaluated. The hypothesis tested was that the body shape of a fatter cow is rounder than that of a thin cow and, therefore, may better fit a parabolic shape. An image-processing model was designed that calculates a parameter to assess body shape. The model was implemented, and its outputs were validated against ultrasonic and thermal camera measurements of the thickness of fat and muscle layers, and manual body condition scoring of 186 Holstein-Friesian cows. The thermal camera overcomes some of the drawbacks of a regular camera; the hooks and the tailhead nadirs of a thin cow diverged from the parabolic shape. The correlation between thermal camera's measurements and fat and muscle thickness was 0.47. Mean body condition scorings were 2.18, 2.15, and 2.23, with no significant difference found across the assessment methods. Further research is needed to achieve fully automatic, accurate body condition scoring.