Agreement between rectal and vaginal temperature measured with temperature loggers in dairy cows

Abstract

The overall objective of this study was to evaluate agreement between rectal (RT) and vaginal temperature (VT) measured with the same temperature loggers in dairy cows. Three experiments were conducted. The study began with a validation in vitro of 24 temperature loggers comparing them to a calibrated liquid-in-glass thermometer as a reference method. The association and agreement between the 24 temperature loggers with the reference method was r=0.996 (P<0.001) with a negligible coefficient of variance (0.005) between the loggers. In-vivo temperature loggers were tested in 11 healthy post-partum cows (Experiment 2) and 12 early post-partum cows with greater body temperature (Experiment 3). Temperature loggers were set to record VT and RT at 1-min intervals. To prevent rectal and vaginal straining and potential expulsion of temperature logger an epidural injection of 2.5 ml of 2% Procain was administered. Association between RT and VT was r=0.92 (P<0.001; Experiment 2) and r=0.94 (P<0.001; Experiment 3) with a negligible difference of -0.1 and 0.01 °C. Bland-Altman plots demonstrated agreement between RT and VT for healthy and early post-partum cows with greater body temperature in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. Furthermore the intra-class correlation coefficient between RT and VT measured with identical loggers within cows of Experiments 2 and 3 also demonstrated greater agreements (P<0.001). Therefore, continuous VT monitoring with temperature loggers can be used as a measure of body temperature in dairy cows.