Life Sciences Commons^™

Automated Body Condition Scoring: Progression Across Lactation And Its Association With Disease And Reproduction In Dairy Cattle, Carissa Marie Truman

Theses and Dissertations--Animal and Food Sciences

Body condition scoring is a technique used to noninvasively assess fat reserves. It provides an objective estimate to describe the current and past nutritional status of the dairy cow and has been associated with increased disease risk and breeding success. Traditionally body condition scores are taken manually by visual appraisal on a 1 to 5 scale, in one-quarter increments. However, recent studies have shown the potential of automating the body condition scoring of cows using images. The first objective was to estimate the likelihood of disease development and breeding success, using odds ratios, associated with body condition score scored automatically …