Cattle
Intervention rankers
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 goal is to help farmers and veterinarians to identify which control or preventative measures have a beneficial impact on disease on an individual farm level. Currently three different subtools are in development: (a) calf alert system that provides herd specific results of key indicator related to calf health (with benchmarks), (b) combining sensor and diagnostic data to improve calf health, and (c) modelling of different scenarios to rank BRD interventions.
Methods
Calf alert system. Based on KalfOK (GD), which calculates the number of key indicators and communicates this back to the farmers. The script of KalfOK is not open access, but all the formulas to calculate the different key indicators are. In DECIDE we are exploring the possibilities to set up a similar system in other countries.
Combining sensor and diagnostic data. Sensor data, climate data and calf feeding data from Lely will be combined with clinical inspections and diagnostic data from GD to seek to combine signals into a warning system to improve calf health. UCPH will be involved in developing the script and combining the signals, GD supports the project with help of diagnostic validation and evaluating the added value of the sensors combined with diagnostics to improve calf health.
BRD scenario’s. We aim to develop this tool by using different datasets including antimicrobial use data, production data, purchase and transport data. A model for exploring different scenario’s is present at INRAE and first simulations are being evaluated. The model will be improved by specific datasets whenever they come available.