Longitudinal Qualitative Behavioural Assessment of Housed Dairy Cattle Over 13 Months

A group of approximately 270 housed dairy cattle were monitored using Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) and activity sensors from June 2024 to July 2025. The dataset, authored by Emily F. Craven and shared on figshare, includes principal component scores derived from QBA terms, analyzed with ARIMA models to explore associations with temperature, season, and milking status. The results suggest affective states in the herd varied with environmental and production factors.

Use Cases

• Modeling associations between environmental temperature and herd affective state based on principal component scores.
• Analyzing seasonal variation in qualitative behavioural assessment scores over a 13-month period.
• Investigating correlations between milk production metrics and principal component scores indicative of emotional state.
• Time series forecasting of herd welfare indicators using ARIMA models.

Strengths

• Longitudinal data covering a 13-month period from June 2024 to July 2025.
• Analysis includes principal component scores explaining 39.3% and 13.4% of variance in QBA terms.
• Statistical models (ARIMA) account for temporal correlation in the outcomes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is very small (20.0 KB), suggesting limited raw data or summary statistics only.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Emily F. Craven.

Collection Method

Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA) and activity sensor monitoring of a housed dairy cattle herd.

Time Range

June 2024 to July 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-17 09:24:21; freshness should be verified.

Geography

null