UNASSIGNED: Body condition score ( @entity12583 ) is strongly correlated with energy reserves. The ease, rapidity of scoring, and high intra- and inter-observer repeatability make it a widely used herd management tool in @entity291 practice and in scientific studies. Loss or gain of @entity12583 , rather than a single @entity12583 measurement, is frequently used to monitor energy balance in dairy @entity291 . It is unknown if the difference between 2 @entity12583 measures taken at different moments (  @entity12583 ) would demonstrate inter-observer agreement similar to that of a single @entity12583 measurement. The objective of this study was to compare inter-observer agreement of @entity12583 and   @entity12583 in dairy @entity291 when multiple observers perform data collection. An observational study was conducted between April and September 2015; 3 observers independently assessed @entity12583 of 73 Holstein @entity291 from 1 commercial dairy herd. Body condition score assessments of the animals were performed between 1 and 20 d in milk (early lactation; exam 1) and again between 41 and 60 d in milk (peak of milk production; exam 2). Quadratic weighted kappa (kw) was computed to quantify agreement between observers for single @entity12583 measurements and   @entity12583 . For single @entity12583 measurements, kw of 0.79 (95% CI: 0.69, 0.85) and 0.84 (95% CI: 0.77, 0.89) were obtained for exam 1 and exam 2, respectively. Such values would be interpreted as strong agreement and are consistent with the available literature on @entity12583 repeatability. When computing agreement for   @entity12583 , a kw value of 0.49 (95% CI: 0.32, 0.63) was obtained, suggesting moderate agreement between observers. These findings suggest that studies investigating single @entity12583 measures could use many observers with a high degree of accuracy in the results. When   @entity12583 is the parameter of interest, more reliable results would be obtained if one observer conducts all assessments.

Short communication: An observational study investigating inter-observer agreement for variation over time of body condition score in dairy XXXX .

@entity12583 :: ('102657274', 'Gene') :: ['BCS'] @entity291 :: ('9913', 'Species') :: ['cows', 'bovine']
@entity291 :: (9913,Species) :: ['cows']
