FertiHealth: integration of on-farm phenotypic and genotypic dairy data

Sustainability of dairy farming can be improved with the help of better monitoring and decision support tools. By integrating multiple sources of on-farm data and information, the complexity of physiological variations within an animal and between animals can be better understood and acted upon. FertiHealth aims at unravelling this complexity by combining phenotypic, genetic and herd context information with the ultimate goal to improve decision support for animal health, production performance and fertility. To this end, a post hoc relational and interaction analysis will be performed on an extensive and detailed set of phenotypical performance traits of dairy cattle and their genetic predisposition and herd context. The insights obtained from this research will finally be integrated into predictive tools for fertility, which is one out of many applications, to validate and demonstrate the project results.

Keywords:Animal health and welfare, Advanced signal processing, Data analytics, Precision livestock farming, Animal breeding, Livestock monitoring & decision support

Disciplines:Animal genetics, Agricultural animal husbandry, Sustainable agriculture, Animal health engineering, Modelling and simulation, Machine learning and decision making, Agricultural technology, Signal processing, Sustainable development