Evaluation of a monitoring system for assessing animal health in dairy cattle

A monitoring system to assess animal health in dairy farms was developed and applied on 44 farms in an epidemiological study. The objective of the study was to evaluate the applicability of the system for long term monitoring of health data. For this purpose, the quality of the collected data and the acceptance of the system by farmers and veterinarians were investigated. Farmers recorded all health events using a form. Collected data was entered into a central database on a monthly basis. The recording of health data was easy to do and did not take a lot of time. Most of the farmers (89%) used less than 20 minutes per week for the recording. This time need was independent of the herd size. 66% of the farmers found it useful to record health data, especially for improving their overview on health of each single cow. Treatments were reported in 81% of the cases, inseminations and calving in 80% of the cases. All events were reported correctly and precise.