When beef cattle drink less: Automated water intake monitoring as an early warning for respiratory disease during the adaptation period at the fattening unit

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) remains the leading health and welfare challenge in intensively finished beef cattle. It is the primary cause of antimicrobial treatments and a major source of economic losses due to reduced performance, increased mortality, and high therapeutic costs. Early, non-invasive indicators of BRD are urgently needed to improve its timely detection and mitigate the negative impact on cattle health and farm economics. With a view to precision livestock farming, this study investigated whether the automatic recording of individual drinking behavior and water consumption could provide some useful indicators of early BRD detection during the critical adaptation period of beef cattle at the fattening unit. The study involved 92 Limousine cattle (64 bulls, 28 heifers) from six different batches imported from France between May 2021 and December 2022. An innovative electronic drinking station equipped with radio-frequency identification and flow sensors automatically recorded individual drinking events, water intake, and time spent drinking during the 4 weeks of adaptation at the fattening farm. During the same time period, individual cattle daily health checks were performed by the farm veterinarian, recording all therapeutic treatments for BRD. Forty-five of the 92 animals (49 %) received at least one treatment for BRD during the 4-week adaptation period. In most cases, the first treatment was administered within the first two weeks of arrival (11.2 ± 6.9 days). Animals treated two or more times for BRD exhibited persistently lower daily water intake compared with untreated animals (20.9 vs. 27.3 L/day, respectively), particularly during the first two weeks after arrival. Two days before treatment, affected animals showed a significant reduction in daily water intake compared with healthy ones, whereas daily drinking time and number of visits to the drinker remained unchanged. Risk analysis revealed that cattle with individual water intake below 20.8 L/day increased by over fourfold the odds ratio of developing BRD. Additionally, groups of beef cattle arriving during autumn–winter exhibited a higher BRD occurrence than those arriving in late spring or early summer. These outcomes encourage the use of automatic devices to monitor the individual drinking behaviour during the adaptation period, as they could help identify conditions in which animals may be at higher risk of developing respiratory diseases.