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Automated recognition of postures and drinking behaviour for the detection of compromised health in pigs

Alameer, A; Kryiazakis, I; Bacardit, J

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Authors

Dr Ali Alameer A.Alameer1@salford.ac.uk
Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence

I Kryiazakis

J Bacardit



Abstract

Changes in pig behaviours are a useful aid in detecting early signs of compromised health and welfare. In commercial settings, automatic detection of pig behaviours through visual imaging remains a challenge due to farm demanding conditions, e.g., occlusion of one pig from another. Here, two deep learning-based detector methods were developed to identify pig postures and drinking behaviours of group-housed pigs. We first tested the system ability to detect changes in these measures at group-level during routine management. We then demonstrated the ability of our automated methods to identify behaviours of individual animals with a mean average precision of 0.989±0.009, under a variety of settings. When the pig feeding regime was disrupted, we automatically detected the expected deviations from the daily feeding routine in standing, lateral lying and drinking behaviours. These experiments demonstrate that the method is capable of robustly and accurately monitoring individual pig behaviours under commercial conditions, without the need for additional sensors or individual pig identification, hence providing a scalable technology to improve the health and well-being of farm animals. The method has the potential to transform how livestock are monitored and address issues in livestock farming, such as targeted treatment of individuals with medication.

Citation

Alameer, A., Kryiazakis, I., & Bacardit, J. (2020). Automated recognition of postures and drinking behaviour for the detection of compromised health in pigs. Scientific reports, 10, 13665. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70688-6

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 30, 2020
Online Publication Date Aug 12, 2020
Publication Date Aug 12, 2020
Deposit Date May 26, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jun 13, 2022
Journal Scientific Reports
Print ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher Nature Publishing Group
Volume 10
Pages 13665
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70688-6
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70688-6
Additional Information Additional Information : Dataset can be found here: https://data.ncl.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Automated_recognition_of_postures_and_drinking_behaviour_for_the_detection_of_compromised_health_in_pigs/13042619

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