Precision livestock farming tools for monitoring dairy cattle behaviour on mountain pastures

Traditional mountain livestock systems are strongly linked to the use of highland pastures. This study explores the use of a biologging system, incorporating commercial GPS and heart rate (HR) sensors, to monitor the behaviour and cardiac activity of six dairy cows grazing in an alpine summer pasture. The GPS logged positions every 2 minutes, while HR was recorded every second. A random forest model, trained on direct observations, was used to infer animal behaviour from GPS data. Each GPS position was associated to the corresponding HR average and difference between maximum and minimum HR within that interval. The GPS sensor achieved a fix rate (ratio between received and expected data) exceeding 90%, while the HR sensor performance varied with time of day and behaviour, peaking at 77% during daytime activity and dropping to 50% during night-time resting. HR metrics showed significant individual variability and were influenced by behaviour and daytime, with lower rates during resting and at night, and higher rates during activity and daytime. They were also positively influenced by slope, and Temperature Humidity Index. This study demonstrates that a commercial biologging system can effectively monitor physiological responses to varying pasture and climatic conditions, offering valuable insights for optimizing livestock management in alpine summer pastures.