A feasibility study on predicting cow calving time over 40 h in advance using heart rate and financial technical...

In dairy farming, the uncertainty of cow calving date often imposes waiting costs for days on farmers. Improving the accuracy of calving date prediction would mitigate these costs, specifically before a few days of the event. We monitored and analyzed the heart rate patterns of eight pregnant cows in the days leading up to calving using a dedicated monitoring device. We decomposed the heart rate data into three distinct components: trend, daily cycle, and the remainder, and discovered that the heart rate trend exhibited a sharp decline more than 40 h before the calving event via the trend turning point. To detect the turning point, we applied common financial technical indicators traditionally used to identify turning points of asset prices in trading markets for the extracted heart rate trend. This study remains a feasibility study because of the limited observations, but it indicates that these indicators can effectively capture the trend's turning point in real time, offering a promising approach for enhanced calving prediction. In addition to discussing the practical implications for cow management, we also contemplate the broader utility of these technical indicators in the context of various dynamic scientific data analyses.