The fits of different models were compared using the deviance information criterion (DIC) [14] . Posterior predictions for the expected hoof temperature as a function of ambient temperature were generated by sampling from the joint posterior density for the higher-order parameters. A range of percentiles of the resulting distribution were used to define thresholds for identifying abnormal animals and the specificity of a classification scheme based on these thresholds (essentially the proportion of animals below the threshold) was assessed.