Review and analysis of computational techniques and methods for body condition score estimation on cows

ALVAREZ, JUAN RODRÍGUEZ; ARROQUI, MAURICIO; MANGUDO, PABLO; TOLOZA, JUAN MANUEL; JATIP, DANIEL; RODRIGUEZ, JUAN MANUEL; ZUNINO, ALEJANDRO; MATEOS, CRISTIAN; MACHADO, CLAUDIO

SADIO Electronic Journal of Informatic and Operation Research

SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INFORMÁTICA E INVESTIGACIÓN OPERATIVA

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2018 vol. 17 p. 48 - 65

1514-6774

BCS (Body Condition Score) is a method used to estimate body fat reserves and accumulated energy balance of cows. BCS heavily influences milk production, reproduction, and health of cows. Therefore, it is important to monitor BCS to achieve better animal response, but this is a time-consuming and subjective task performed oftentimes visually by expert scorers. These problems are the motivation behind several studies, which have tried to automate BCS of dairy cows by applying image analysis and machine learning techniques. This work analyzes these studies pointing out their main advantages and drawbacks, which allow us in turn to identify new research and development opportunities to improve overall automatic BCS estimation.