Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Anadolu Tarım Bilimleri Dergisi, cilt.35, sa.2, ss.245-250, 2020 (Hakemli Dergi)
Water is the most vital nutrient directly affecting the production performance and comfort of cattle. Sufficient amount of clean water must be provided in order to obtain the optimum yields in milk and meat production. Measuring individual water intakes of cattle on a farm is not commonly practiced because it requires huge amount of human work. Determining daily water drinking behaviors of cattle can give information about their welfare, health and inadequate farm practices. The aim of this study was to develop a new automatic water intake measurement and recording system giving an opportunity to monitor individual water drinking behaviors of cattle. The developed system consists of three main units: mechanical unit, electronic unit and data storage/processing unit. The mechanical unit holds different components together and provides durability with its installation to the ground. The electronic unit collects the RFID tag number and the amount of water intakes for cattle during a day and sends wirelessly them to the data storage/processing unit during each drinking event. Data storage and processing unit saves the data to its database and makes necessary calculations. A field test with dairy cows was done to determine the performance of the developed system. The cows had 80.55 to 164.41 liters of daily free water intakes, 581 to 2870 seconds of daily water intake durations and 13 to 40 of daily drinking events.