The diversity in dairy cattle reticulorumen temperature: Identifying water intake events

• A novel method to identify dairy cow drinking events was investigated. • Developed a high accuracy threshold model to isolate drinking events. • Reticulorumen sensors used to assess drinking event variability. • Revealed seasonal differences in pasture-based dairy cattle drinking activity. • First step towards an improved understanding of core body temperature diversity. Climate change and associated weather variability across the Australian landscape has lent themselves to an increased incidence of cattle heat stress. Water consumption can have a sizeable, sustained impact on reticulorumen temperature readings, thereby impacting our interpretation of an individual’s underlying physiological response to changing environmental conditions. To distinguish drinking events, we developed a drinking event detection model based on observed drinking events (video recording) from 28 dairy heifers, alongside sensor-derived reticulorumen temperature (smaXtec Animal Care GmbH) profiles. The optimised model identified drinking events with high accuracy (F-score = 0.99), as predicted when the average reticulorumen temperature declined by at least 0.5°C per 10-minutes, over a 10-, 20-, or 30-minute period. To account for differences in rapidity of decline, smaller reductions of 0.25°C per 10 min were considered valid indicators of a drinking event, provided the 0.5°C per 10-minute threshold was also met in a consecutive observation period. The temporal variability in drinking behaviour for 1,429 lactating dairy cattle across three dairy farms was then determined. Daily drinking events were greater in summer (mean 4.1) than winter (mean 3.3), while the change in reticulorumen temperature with each drinking event was smaller in summer (mean 3.7°C) than winter (mean 4.9°C). Drinking-recovery duration averaged 97.8 min/event. By revealing temporal differences in drinking behaviour for pasture-based dairy cattle, this work provides the basis for an improved understanding of core body temperature diversity.