Cattle
Early warning tool
The overall aim of the cattle group is to develop tools which can support farmers and veterinarians in their decision-making on farm to prevent and control respiratory and intestinal diseases in calves (bovine respiratory disease (BRD) and neonatal calf diarrhea (NCD)). The working titles of the tools are (1) early warning tool, (2) purchase assistant, (3) intervention rankers, and (4) barometer, though some are closely related and could be connected in the future.
Objectives
The aim is to create an alert that will warn farmers that the incidence of BRD, NCD or calf mortality has surpassed a threshold and intervention is needed.
Methods
For mortality, we aim to develop this tool by using calf data (Kalvpaketet), sensor data (GigaCow), and data on disease treatment, animal movement, culling reasons, and laboratory diagnostics. Currently we are working on the models to implement early warning in case of increased mortality (stillbirths, number of dead calves between 1-60 days, 61-180 days, and 181-450 days). We will also take the number of positive samples from calves submitted for different pathogens (lab data) and farm-level/animal-level data into account.