# Research and Development of Automatic Monitoring System for Livestock Farms
## 5 Conclusions and Prospects  
An automatic monitoring system for livestock farms was designed and implemented in this study based on long-term data collection and analysis, and the conclusions of this study have been summarized as follows:  
The lactation yields of the Holstein-Friesian cows were found to be significantly correlated to the seasons. Compared to the hot and humid season in August, there was a significant 4.0935 L/day average increase in lactation yield per dairy cow for the cooler season in March. Furthermore, there was a 0.6481 L/day reduction of average lactation yield per dairy cow as the temperature increased about 1 \({}^{\circ}\)C under moderate heat stress status. Also, a strike of three-day cold current could cause a 1.0273 L/day reduction of average lactation yield per dairy cow, and a one-day heat stress showed only little impact on the lactation yield.  
In addition, the trending of temperature-humidity index (THI) and apparent temperature index (AT) of the dairy cows were pretty much similar. Under mild heat stress status, the lactation yields would decrease as the indexes went up, and vice versa. Therefore, the scheme of the apparent temperature index could also be used to evaluate the physical status of dairy cows.  
Under moderate heat stress, the impacts of temperatures on lactation yields were greater than humidity. Therefore, it was necessary to control the environment temperature through adjusting the cooling devices such as fans and water valves to improve the lactation yields of dairy cows under heat stress.  
In this experiment, the pig barns were far away from the office, thus the wireless communication was affected by obstacles such as farmhouses and trees which caused instability in the retrieving and transmittance of environmental data. It happened quite often that it was necessary to reset and restart the communication before the signals could be successfully retrieved again. Therefore, we suggest to seriously assess the topography and communication environment prior to selecting appropriate wireless communication method in building the wireless monitoring system. In addition, the selections of sensor types need to put controller compatibility into considerations, so that a stable and accurate monitoring system can be implemented successfully. In the future, the simulation analysis will be studied by the ANSYS HFSS software to obtain the adequate environment for wireless communication. Moreover, we will study the home energy management by optimal analysis approaches as the data collected are rich enough. We also plan to apply the big data for predictive control too.  
Figure 17: The average lactation yield per dairy cow in the morning and afternoon.  
**Author Contributions:** [PERSON] conceived, designed the experiments and wrote the paper; [PERSON] performed the experiments.  
**Funding:** This research was funded by National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, grant number 1065603-16.  
**Acknowledgments:** We are grateful for the budget support of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology and the assistance of relevant staff in Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary.  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.