Abstract
These studies were performed to provide some basic informations for developing an automatic system in dairy farming cattle in order that the farmers may easily and automatically detect the maintenance of pregnancy and the fact of abortion of the pregnant cows and also to find out the diseased animals with fever. As a method of automatical detection of the maintenance of pregnancy or the fact of abortion, weighing the pregnant cows was conducted from one month-pregnancy to the term using a digital balance. From the first to the 3rd month of pregnancy the body weight of dairy cows was slowly increased (less than 2% per month), then, relatively high increase (3.4% -4.3% per month) from the fourth to the seventh month followed by decrease (3.3%) in the 8th month and very low increase (0.8-0.9%) from the 9th month to the term were shown, resulting in increase of 128.8 kg (25.05%) of body weight to be compared with the first weight. More than 107, increase of body weight to be compared with the first month-weight was denoted from the 61th month of pregnancy and more than 20% increase from the 7th or the 8th month of pregnancy as wells consequently it was presumed that detection of the maintenance of pregnancy is possible from the 4th or the 5th month of pregnancy. It was possible to diagnose a cow aborted at the 6th month by continual weighing the cow from the 1st month of pregnancy. The calved cows showed considerably higher decrease of body weight even in the third week after parturition (p<0.01)to be compared with the body weight near to the term (81.8-102.0 kg, 14-16% decrease). During the same period of 8months, the pregnant cows gained 127.4 kg (24.78% increase), whereas the non-pregnant cows gained 33.0 kg (0.71% increase) to be compared with the first weight showing considerably higher increase of body weight gain in the pregnant cows than the non-pregnant cows (p<0.01). The statistics of body temperatures of dairy cattle were collected from three clinics including the Teaching Hospital of Chonbuk University and the diseases were classified simply by the major symptoms manifested, denoting the highest temperature in respiratory disease ($39.8{\circ}C$) and the lowest in alimentary disease ($39.6{\circ} C$). These informations of body temperatures were expected to be of value for early and automatical detection of the diseased animals with fever when automatic machinery would be established. The results of periodic weighing the body weight of pregnant cows while milking were also expected to be of great use for the farmers to detect the maintenance of pregnancy and the fact of abortion when the automatic system is established in the near future.
