269 Validation of an Automatic Scale Equipped with Solar Panels for Grazing Beef Cattle

Body weight (BW) is used to detect health and nutritional disorders in cattle, as well as calculate profitability of the production system based on weight gain curves. In grazing systems, measuring BW frequently implies moving animals, which is labor intense, stressful, and reduces grazing time and feed intake. All of which negatively impacts animal performance. An automated scale in the pasture can reduce labor and animal handling, while ensuring an accurate BW estimation. Our objective was to evaluate the functionality and accuracy of an automatic wireless scale system equipped with solar panels (SmartScale, C-LOCKTM), when compared to a conventional scale located at the cattle working facility. Eight multiparous beef cows were weighed in a 14-day interval for a period of 57 days with a conventional scale, while at the same time BW was measured daily with an automated scale located at the pasture in front of the water trough. This wireless system registers BW every time the animal approaches the water trough and automatically transmit it to a server via cellular network. Correlation between weighing systems was evaluated through a linear regression (R Core Team, 2019), where the adjusted R2 value was 0.99, determining an excellent linear relationship between values obtained by the conventional scale and values obtained by the automated scale. In addition, the automated scale registered the time of day, time spent in the scale, and number of daily visits. The probability to find an animal at the scale varies between 15% to 20% during daylight, decreasing under 9% during the night, with 2.56±1.50 average number of visits per day, where animals spend in average 2.94±1.84 minutes. In conclusion, the automated scale has the ability to measure BW with great precision and has potential to be used as a complimentary instrument to evaluate animal behavior in grazing systems.

314 Carbohydrases Enzymes Improve the Productive Performance of Grazing Nellore Bulls Fed Different Nutritional Plans During the Rainy Season

The aim with this trial was to evaluate two nutritional plans with the addition of dosages of carbohydrases enzyme blend on productive performance of grazing Nellore bulls in rainy season. One hundred and two contemporary Nellore steers (BW = 294.10 ± 3.35 kg) were equally distributed in six paddocks (17 steers/paddock) following a completely randomized design in a 2x3 factorial arrangement, being the factors two nutritional plans: mineral-proteic supplementation (Fosbovi® Proteico 30; PS) offered at 0,1% BW or mineral-protein-energetic supplementation (Fosbovi® Proteico-Energético 25; PES) offered at 0.3% BW); and three levels of enzymatic carbohydrases blend (0, 4,75 or 9,50 g/animal/day). The enzymatic blend was mainly composed by beta-glucanase and xylanase enzymes (Ronozyme® VP and Ronozyme® WX); Both enzymes and supplemented were provided by DSM Nutritional Products Brasil S.A. Supplement intake and animal weighting were carried out daily and individually by an automatic scale system installed in each paddock. Data were analyzed using PROC MIXED of SAS and means were compared by polynomial regression. Animals that received PES had greater ADG (0.896 vs. 0.775 kg/day; P < 0.001) compared to those fed PS. Intermediary level (4.75 g/day) of carbohydrate enzymes also presented the highest ADG in PES compared to 0.0 level (0.941 vs. 0.896 kg/day; P = 0.006). Still, higher enzyme levels (9.5 g/day) presented greater ADG on PS, when compared to 0.0 level (0.852 vs. 0.775 kg/day, P = 0.006). PES animals presented greater intake, compared to PS (1.112 vs. 0.432 kg/day, P < 0.001). According to polynomial regression, it is recommended to include 4.75 g/day of these carbohydrases enzymes in PS and 4.39 g/day in PES for growing Nellore bulls in rainy season.

PSXIII-13 Feeding carbohydrases to grazing beef cattle under different nutritional strategies on dry season: feeding behavior

The aim with this trial was to evaluate two nutritional plans with the addition of dosages of carbohydrases enzyme blend on feeding behavior of grazing Nellore bulls in rainy season. One hundred and two contemporary Nellore steers (BW = 294.10 ± 3.35 kg) were equally distributed in six paddocks (17 steers/paddock) following a completely randomized design in a 2x3 factorial arrangement, being the factors two nutritional plans: mineral-proteic supplementation (Fosbovi® Proteico 35; PS) offered at 0,1% BW or mineral-protein-energetic supplementation (Fosbovi® Proteico-Energético 25; PES) offered at 0.3% BW); and three levels of enzymatic carbohydrases blend (0, 4,75 or 9,50 g/animal/day). The enzymatic blend was mainly composed by beta-glucanase and xylanase enzymes (Ronozyme® VP and Ronozyme® WX); Both enzymes and supplemented were provided by DSM Nutritional Products Brasil S.A. Feeding behavior data were collected daily and individually by an automatic scale/feeder system installed in the paddocks. Data were analyzed using PROC MIXED of SAS. Animals fed PES presented greater number of visits to the feed bunks (19.73 vs. 10.12 visits/day; P < 0.0001), to the water fountains (2.95 vs. 2.32 visits/day; P < 0.0001) and greater water intake (22.43 vs. 17.73 L/day; P < 0.0001) in comparison with animals fed PS treatments. Also, animals receiving PES spent more time taking supplement (1.332 vs. 545 seconds/visit; P < 0.0001) and water (203 vs. 153 seconds/visit; P < 0.0001) then PS animals did. No linear and quadratic effects were observed for feeding behavior when including carbohydrases enzymes to PES or PS supplement. PSE nutritional plan positively influence feeding behavior of Nellore bulls in dry season, increasing cattle feed bunk access and water intake in a daily basis.

Learning-Free Text Line Segmentation for Historical Handwritten Documents

We present a learning-free method for text line segmentation of historical handwritten document images. This method relies on automatic scale selection together with second derivative of anisotropic Gaussian filters to detect the blob lines that strike through the text lines. Detected blob lines guide an energy minimization procedure to extract the text lines. Historical handwritten documents contain noise, heterogeneous text line heights, skews and touching characters among text lines. Automatic scale selection allows for automatic adaption to the heterogeneous nature of handwritten text lines in case the character height range is correctly estimated. In the extraction phase, the method can accurately split the touching characters among the text lines. We provide results investigating various settings and compare the model with recent learning-free and learning-based methods on the cBAD competition dataset.

PSII-3 Carbohydrases enzymes improve the productive performance of grazing Nellore steers fed different nutritional plans during dry season

The aim was to evaluate two nutritional plans with the addition of dosages of carbohydrases enzyme blend on productive performance of grazing Nellore bulls in dry season. A total of 102 Nellore bulls (BW = 294.10 ± 3.35 kg) were equally distributed in six paddocks (17 bulls/paddock) following a completely randomized design in a 2x3 factorial arrangement, being the factors different nutritional plans (2): mineral-proteic supplementation (PS; Fosbovi® Proteico 35) offered at 0,1% BW or mineral-protein-energetic supplementation (PES; Fosbovi® Proteico-Energético 25) offered at 0.3% BW; and levels of enzymatic carbohydrases blend (3):0,00 (control), 4,75 or 9,50 g/animal/day. The enzymatic blend was mainly composed by beta-glucanase and xylanase enzymes (Ronozyme® VP and Ronozyme® WX) and included in the supplements (both enzymes and supplements provided by DSM Nutritional Products Brasil S.A.). Supplement intake and animal weighting were carried out daily and individually by an automatic scale system installed in each paddock, thus, animal was considered the experimental unit. Data were analyzed using PROC MIXED of SAS and means were compared by polynomial regression. A quadratic effect was observed on enzyme level for ADG in both nutritional plans (P = 0.014), with intermediary dosages presenting the highest values of ADG for PS (0,283 vs. 0,188 kg/day) and PES (0.429 vs. 0.391 kg/day), over control respectively. Although no linear and quadratic enzyme effect was observed for final BW (FBW), animals supplemented with PES presented 20,06 kg higher FBW compared to PS (341,63 vs. 321,57 kg, P < 0.001). An increasing linear effect was observed for supplement intake (kg/day), for both PS and PES (P = 0.020). According the polynomial regression, it is recommended to include 4.67 g/day of carbohydrases blend in PS and 3.77 g/day in PES, being the carbohydrases blend a viable technology to grazing cattle. Moreover, mineral-protein-energetic supplementation can optimize Nellore bulls performance during dry season.