Relating Lying Behavior With Climate, Body Condition Score, and Milk Production in Dairy Cows

Attention on animal behavior and welfare has been increasing. Scientific knowledge
about the effect of behavior and welfare on animals’ production augmented and made
clear the need of improving their living conditions. Among the variables to monitor in
dairy cattle farming, lying time represents a signal for health and welfare status as well
as for milk production. The aim of this study is to identify the relationship among the
lying behavior of dairy cows and milk production, body condition score (BCS), weather
variables, and the temperature–humidity index (THI) in the barn from a dairy farm located
in Northern Italy. One-year data were collected on this farm with sensors that allowed
monitoring of the environmental conditions in the barn and the activity of primiparous
lactating cows. Principal components analysis (PCA), factor analysis (FA), generalized
linear model select (GLMSelect), and logistic analysis (LA) were carried out to get the
relationships among variables. Among the main results, it emerges that the effect of
weather parameters is quite restrained, except for THI > 70, which negatively affects
the lying time. In addition, the most productive cows are found to lie down more than the
less productive ones, and the parameters of milk production, lying time, and BCS are
found to be linked by a similar trend.