Performance of a Sensor-Based Health Monitoring System for the Detection of Clinical Mastitis in Dairy Cows

Mastitis is one of the most important production diseases in dairy farming and affects animal welfare, milk quality, and farm profitability. The use of automated health-monitoring systems has increased, and temperature-sensing reticular boluses are used to detect mastitis and other diseases or physiological responses. This study aimed to evaluate whether mastitis alerts generated by the smaXtec system are associated with subsequently diagnosed clinical mastitis under field conditions. An alert-based prospective case series was conducted on nine dairy farms in northern and western Germany. All cows receiving a smaXtec mastitis alert were included if a corresponding milk sample was available. Clinical examination, quarter milk sampling and microbiological analysis were performed. Among the 102 alerted cows, 40 were diagnosed with clinical mastitis within a 4-day observation period, with most of the cases being non-severe. This corresponded to a positive predictive value of 39.2%. We conclude that accelerometer- and temperature-based monitoring may support the detection of clinical mastitis, but this study showed limited diagnostic value under practical field conditions, when used as a stand-alone tool.