This observational study aimed to describe the diurnal pattern of reticuloruminal contraction rate (RRCR) and the proportion of time spent ruminating by cattle, using two commercial devices equipped with triaxial accelerometers: an indwelling bolus (placed in the reticulum) and a neck collar. The three objectives of this study were firstly to determine whether the indwelling bolus provided observations consistent with RRCR as determined by clinical examination using auscultation and ultrasound, secondly to compare estimates of time spent ruminating using the indwelling bolus and a collar-based accelerometer, and finally to describe the diurnal pattern of RRCR using the indwelling bolus data. Six rumen-fistulated, non-lactating Jersey cows were fitted with an indwelling bolus (SmaXtec Animal Care GmbH, Graz, Austria) and a neck collar (Silent Herdsman, Afimilk Ltd. Kibbutz Afikim, Israel), and data were collected over two weeks. Cattle were housed together in a single straw-bedded pen and fed ad libitum hay. To assess the agreement between the indwelling bolus and traditional methods of assessing reticuloruminal contractility in the first week, the RRCR was determined over 10 min, twice a day, by ultrasound and auscultation. Mean inter-contraction intervals (ICI) derived from bolus and ultrasound, and from auscultation were 40.4 ± 4.7, 40.1 ± 4.0 and 38.4 ± 3.3 s. Bland–Altmann plots showed similar performance of the methods with small biases. The Pearson correlation coefficient for the time spent ruminating derived from neck collars and indwelling boluses was 0.72 (highly significant, P < 0.001). The indwelling boluses generated a consistent diurnal pattern for all the cows. In conclusion, a robust relationship was observed between clinical observation and the indwelling boluses for estimation of ICI and, similarly, between the indwelling bolus and neck collar for estimating rumination time. The indwelling boluses showed a clear diurnal pattern for RRCR and time spent ruminating, indicating that they should be useful for assessing reticuloruminal motility.

Although Nematodirus battus is a serious threat to the health and survival of young lambs, there are few options to control this parasite. Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain modelling with a zero-inflated Poisson distribution was used to estimate the heritability of egg counts in both June and July for each of five consecutive cohorts of 200 Scottish Blackface lambs. In one of the 10 analyses, the results failed the diagnostic tests. In seven of the analyses, there was no convincing evidence that the variation in egg counts was heritable. In the 2 years of high infection, the heritability was approximately 0.4 in June but the estimates lacked precision and the 95% highest posterior density credible intervals ranged from just above zero to 0.7. Selective breeding for resistance to N. battus will be difficult because genetically resistant or susceptible lambs cannot be consistently identified by phenotypic markers.

The growth in wirelessly enabled sensor network technologies has enabled the low cost deployment of sensor platforms with applications in a range of sectors and communities. In the agricultural domain such sensors have been the foundation for the creation of decision support tools that enhance farm operational efficiency. This Research Reflection illustrates how these advances are assisting dairy farmers to optimise performance and illustrates where emerging sensor technology can offer additional benefits. One of the early applications for sensor technology at an individual animal level was the accurate identification of cattle entering into heat (oestrus) to increase the rate of successful pregnancies and thus optimise milk yield per animal. This was achieved through the use of activity monitoring collars and leg tags. Additional information relating to the behaviour of the cattle, namely the time spent eating and ruminating, was subsequently derived from collars giving further insights of economic value into the wellbeing of the animal, thus an enhanced range of welfare related services have been provisioned. The integration of the information from neck-mounted collars with the compositional analysis data of milk measured at a robotic milking station facilitates the early diagnosis of specific illnesses such as mastitis. The combination of different data streams also serves to eliminate the generation of false alarms, improving the decision making capability. The principle of integrating more data streams from deployed on-farm systems, for example, with feed composition data measured at the point of delivery using instrumented feeding wagons, supports the optimisation of feeding strategies and identification of the most productive animals. Optimised feeding strategies reduce operational costs and minimise waste whilst ensuring high welfare standards. These IoT-inspired solutions, made possible through Internet-enabled cloud data exchange, have the potential to make a major impact within farming practices. This paper gives illustrative examples and considers where new sensor technology from the automotive industry may also have a role.

The experiment reported in this research paper aimed to determine whether clinical and subclinical effects on cattle were similar if provided with isoenergetic and isonitrogenous challenge diets in which carbohydrate sources were predominantly starch or sugar. The study was a 3 × 3 Latin square using six adult Jersey cows with rumen cannulae, over 9 weeks. In the first 2 weeks of each 3 week experimental period cows were fed with a maintenance diet and, in the last week, each animal was assigned to one of three diets: a control diet (CON), being a continuation of the maintenance diet; a high starch (HSt) or a high sugar (HSu) diet. Reticuloruminal pH and motility were recorded throughout the study period. Blood and ruminal samples were taken on day-1 (TP-1), day-2 (TP-2) and day-7 (TP-7) of each challenge week. Four clinical variables were recorded daily: diarrhoea, inappetence, depression and ruminal tympany. The effects of treatment, hour of day and day after treatment on clinical parameters were analysed using linear mixed effects (LME) models. Although both challenge diets resulted in a decline in pH, an increase in the absolute pH residuals and an increase in the number of minutes per day under pH 5.8, systemic inflammation was only detected with the HSt diet. The challenge diets differentially modified amplitude and period of reticuloruminal contractions compared with CON diet and both were associated with an increased probability of diarrhoea. The HSu diet reduced the probability of an animal consuming its complete allocation. Because the challenge diets were derived from complex natural materials (barley and molasses respectively), it is not possible to assign all the differential effects to the difference in starch and sugar concentration: non-starch components of barley or non-sugar components of molasses might have contributed to some of the observations. In conclusion, substituting much of the starch with sugar caused no substantial reduction in the acidosis load, but inflammatory response was reduced while feed rejection was increased.

One of the most common causes of calf diarrhoea is the parasite Cryptosporidium parvum. Two longitudinal studies were carried out on a dairy farm Scotland to determine the prevalence of Cryptosporidium species and subtypes in a group of calves and to determine whether dams were a possible source of calfhood infection. Fecal samples were collected from 25 calves from birth to 12 months in the first year. In the second year, fecal samples were collected from pregnant cows (n = 29) and their calves (n = 30) from birth to 6 months. The samples were tested for Cryptosporidium and speciated. Cryptosporidium parvum-positive samples were subtyped by GP60 fragment analysis. All calves in both studies shed Cryptosporidium during the study period. Cryptosporidium parvum was the predominant species detected in calves ⩽6 weeks of age and at 6 months of age, C. bovis and C. ryanae were detected in calves older than 4 weeks of age but ⩽6 months of age. The prevalence of Cryptosporidium was higher in younger animals than in older animals. GP60 subtyping revealed two subtypes in calves on this farm (IIaA15G2R1 and IIaA19G2R1) that differed in frequency by age. Adult cattle also shed C. parvum, of four gp60 genotypes.

Cryptosporidium is a well-known cause of neonatal enteritis in cattle worldwide. Cattle are commonly infected with four different species of Cryptosporidium but only one of these, Cryptosporidium parvum, is associated with clinical disease. Identification of species in cases of calf scour can give an indication if Cryptosporidium is the causative agent or not. In addition, C. parvum is a zoonotic species and so has implications for human health, for this reason it is important to identify the species of Cryptosporidium infecting cattle particularly where a farm is implicated in an outbreak of cryptosporidiosis in humans. Here a multiplex PCR test, which can identify the four common cattle-adapted Cryptosporidium species, including C. parvum, has been developed. This test allows quick and accurate detection of Cryptosporidium species in cattle fecal samples including mixed infections, which could be missed by the more common method of sequencing the same gene.

The gender diagnosticity (GD) approach of Lippa (1995) was used to evaluate the relationship of within-sex differences in psychological masculinity–femininity to a genetic characteristic, the length of a repeated CAG sequence in the X-linked androgen receptor (AR) gene. Previously assessed adult samples in Australia and Sweden were used for this purpose. A weak relationship (correlations in the range .11 to .14) was obtained in both countries. Additional data from adolescent twins from Australia (12-, 14-, 16-year-olds) did not confirm such a relationship at those ages, especially for males. The fact that this sample consisted of twins permitted two kinds of within-pair comparisons: (1) Did the dizygotic twin who had the longer AR sequence have the higher GD score? (2) Was one twin's GD score more highly correlated with the other twin's AR score in MZ than in DZ pairs? The answer in both cases was negative. Clarification of these relationships will require large samples and measurements at additional ages.