The animal-based monitoring  survey method is the reference for data acquisition on livestock performances (Poivey et al., 1981; Faugère and Faugère, 1986; Landais and Faugère, 1986; Landais and Sissokho, 1986; CIRAD-IEMVT, 1990; ILCA, 1990; Planchenault, 1990; Faugère et al., 1991; Lhoste et al., 1993; de Leeuw et al., 1995; van Klink et al., 1996; Tillard et al., 1997; Metz and Asfaw, 1999).

The method consists in following a sample of herds during a predefined period, of which whole or part of the animals are identified individually, generally using ear-tags. Enumerators regularly visit the herds, for instance every fifteen or thirty days. For demography, they count at each visit the animals present in the herds and record all the events having taken place between two successive visits (parturitions, deaths, sales, purchases, etc.).

Animal-based monitoring generate precise and reliable data.  They are well adapted to establish precise technical reference frames of the productivity of breeds or livestock farming systems or to implement field experimentations in rural areas to quantify the impact of interventions or innovations.

Animal-based monitoring implies repeated measurements  on the same animal, which require a particular organization of the data collection, management and analysis. CIRAD has long experience of this type of survey. The first methodological work was carried out on bovines in the North of the Ivory Coast in the years 1970. This work was finalized in Senegal at the beginning of the years 1980 by the development of the PANURGE system (Faugère and Faugère, 1993), used until the end of the years 1990 in several countries (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Brasil). Other systems were proposed and used in Cameroun, Chad and Niger (PIKBEU, Planchenault, 1990). At the time of major updates of available commercial information systems, a broad reflection was carried out from 1995 to 1999 on the structure of the data bases necessary for animal-based monitoring in ruminant livestock herds (Lancelot et al., 1998). This work led to the development of the Laser software (Juanès and Lancelot, 1999), whose field applications provided many scientific publications.

Then in 2016, a new version of LASER, named LASER2, has been written in MS Access © . 

It can manage data of various natures:  demography (reproduction, mortality, exit and entry of animals in the herds), productions (milk, ponderal growth, body state), pathologies (symptoms, serologies), artificial inseminations and all kinds of zootechnical or medical interventions delivered on the level of the animal or the herd.

WARNING:  The old version (Laser) is not maintained anymore. 

Contact

xavier.juanes@cirad.fr

lionel.julien@cirad.fr

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