The use of an electronic monitoring device to record the effect of cow cubicle floor gradients on cow occupancy

Abstract

An electronic monitoring instrument was developed to record the amount of time during which cow cubicles are occupied daily by recumbent cows. The instrument also recorded the number of times the cubicle was occupied for periods of greater than 5 min. The equipment was used to assess the occupancy of lipless concrete floored cubicles having different floor gradients. Cubicles of standard length 2.25 m, but with falls of 50, 100 or 150 mm, were occupied for 520, 499 and 399 ± 22.5 min/day, respectively. The 150-mm cubicles were occupied for significantly shorter periods per day than either the 100-mm (P < 0.01) or 50-mm (P < 0.001) cubicles. There was a tendency for the average duration of an occupation incident to decrease as the floor gradient increased.