Pose-Driven Cow Behavior Recognition in Complex Barn Environments: A Method Combining Knowledge Distillation and Deployment Optimization

Cattle behavior constitutes important phenotypic information reflecting animals’ health status, activity level, and welfare condition, and is therefore of considerable significance for automated monitoring and precision management in smart livestock farming. However, under complex barn conditions, cattle behavior recognition is easily affected by factors such as illumination variation, partial occlusion, background interference, and individual differences, thereby reducing recognition stability