Publications & Presentations
Publications and Presentations
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Peer Reviewed Publications and Abstracts
| Link to Publication | Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|---|
 | Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) in Post-Weaning Calves with Different Prevention Strategies and the Impact on Performance and Health Status Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is one of the major threats to the health and well-being of young calves. The disease affects long-term animal performance and has economic implications for cattle producers. Preventative strategies such as metaphylaxis have been shown to reduce the severity of BRD and improve performance and overall health status. However, the use of antibiotics in this fashion continues to come under scrutiny due to its possible link to antimicrobial resistance. The objective of our study was to compare a metaphylaxis to a vaccination strategy in high-risk dairy and dairy beef cross-bred calves. The use of metaphylaxis for BRD was superior to the vaccination strategy in this study. 2024; doi.org/10.3390/ani14192807 | Madureira Ferreira M., Santos B., Skarbek A., Mills C., Thom H., Prentice D., McConnel C., Leal Yepes F.A. |
 | Mask R-CNN and Centroid Tracking Algorithm to Process UAV Based Thermal-RGB Video for Drylot Cattle Heat Stress Monitoring This study developed and evaluated an algorithm for processing thermal-RGB video feeds captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to automate heat stress monitoring in cattle housed in the drylots. Operating at one frame per second, algorithm successfully detected 72.4% and 81.65% of total cows in video frames from dataset-1 (38 s) and -2 (48 s), respectively. The mean absolute difference between algorithm output and ground truth (BSTGT) was 2.1 °C (dataset-1) and 3.3 °C (dataset-2), demonstrating satisfactory performance. With further refinements, this approach could be a viable tool for real-time heat stress monitoring in large-scale drylot production systems. 2024 | Dadallage K., Amogi B.R., Khot L.R., and Leal Yepes F.A. |
 | 2024: Can the Prevention of Diseases in Cattle Reduce Their Footprint? Aims to investigate how disease prevention can reduce the environmental impact of cattle production to drive sustainable development globally. 2024 | Leal Yepes F.A., Chiu L.V., McFadden J. |
Presentations
| Link to Recording | Event | Title | Speaker(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program Seminar Series May 2023 | Dairying in Latin America: A Story of Growth, Sustainability, and Food Security | Francisco Leal Yepes |