Publications by authors named "Marco Bovo"

Wearable collar technologies have become integral to the advancement of precision livestock farming, revolutionizing how dairy cattle are monitored in terms of their behaviour, health status, and productivity. These devices leverage cutting-edge sensors, including accelerometers, RFID tags, GPS receivers, microphones, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, to provide non-invasive, real-time insights that enhance animal welfare, optimize resource use, and support decision-making processes in livestock management. This systematized review focuses on analyzing the sensors integrated into collar-based systems, detailing their functionalities and applications.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Optimal livestock production is a key contributor to the achievement of sustainable development goals. The management and disposal of livestock manure is one of the main issues facing the sector in terms of soil, water and air pollution. Proper and sustainable management of livestock manure also requires a systemic approach to the problem, considering it at different territorial levels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The rise in fish and seafood consumption driven by aquaculture comes with its share of challenges and controversies, notably the need for expanded feed production. The use of fishmeal and fish oil to raise carnivorous fish has caused environmental problems, including ecosystem imbalance and habitat destruction, as well as ethical issues like fishing forage fish for feed instead of human consumption. Thus, the industry has been actively pursuing alternative feed ingredients to reduce reliance on fish-derived components.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of wheat middlings (WM) and rice husks (RH) as biofillers for mixing with poly(lactic acid) (PLA) matrix to produce new 3D-printable biocomposites was assessed. Filaments containing 10 and 20 wt.% agro-waste-derived biofillers were manufactured and, for the sake of comparison, filaments of neat PLA were also produced.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the dairy cattle sector, the evaluation of the effects induced by heat stress is still one of the most impactful and investigated aspects as it is strongly connected to both sustainability of the production and animal welfare. On the other hand, more recently, the possibility of collecting a large dataset made available by the increasing technology diffusion is paving the way for the application of advanced numerical techniques based on machine learning or big data approaches. In this scenario, driven by rapid change, there could be the risk of dispersing the relevant information represented by the physiological animal component, which should maintain the central role in the development of numerical models and tools.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The present study aimed to evaluate animal welfare of pigs from the same farm, raised with two ventilation systems. The study involved 60 pens of fattening pigs, raised in two buildings: one naturally ventilated (NV) and the other mechanically ventilated (MV). Pigs were assessed on three observation days: at 40 kg (T1), 100 kg (T2), and 160 kg (T3) of live weight.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) relies on several technological approaches to acquire, in the most efficient way, precise and real-time data concerning production and welfare of individual animals. In this regard, in the dairy sector, PLF devices are being increasingly adopted, automatic milking systems (AMSs) are becoming increasingly widespread, and monitoring systems for animals and environmental conditions are becoming common tools in herd management. As a consequence, a great amount of daily recorded data concerning individual animals are available for the farmers and they could be used effectively for the calibration of numerical models to be used for the prediction of future animal production trends.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF