The proper spatial distribution of chickens is an indication of a healthy flock. Routine inspections of broiler chicken floor distribution are done manually in commercial grow-out houses every day, which is labor intensive and time consuming. This task requires an efficient and automatic system that can monitor the chicken’s floor distributions. In the current study, a machine vision-based method was developed and tested in an experimental broiler house. For the new method to recognize bird distribution in the images, the pen floor was virtually defined/divided into drinking, feeding, and rest/exercise zones. As broiler chickens grew, the images collected each day were analyzed separately to avoid biases caused by changes of body weight/size over time. About 7000 chicken areas/profiles were extracted from images collected from 18 to 35 days of age to build a BP neural network model for floor distribution analysis, and another 200 images were used to validate the model. The results showed that the identification accuracies of bird distribution in the drinking and feeding zones were 0.9419 and 0.9544, respectively. The correlation coefficient (R), mean square error (MSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) of the BP model were 0.996, 0.038, and 0.178, respectively, in our analysis of broiler distribution. Missed detections were mainly caused by interference with the equipment (e.g., the feeder hanging chain and water line); studies are ongoing to address these issues. This study provides the basis for devising a real-time evaluation tool to detect broiler chicken floor distribution and behavior in commercial facilities.
The presence equipment (e.g., water pipes, feed buckets, and other presence equipment, etc.) in the poultry house can occlude the areas of broiler chickens taken via top view. This can affect the analysis of chicken behaviors through a vision-based machine learning imaging method. In our previous study, we developed a machine vision-based method for monitoring the broiler chicken floor distribution, and here we processed and restored the areas of broiler chickens which were occluded by presence equipment. To verify the performance of the developed restoration method, a top-view video of broiler chickens was recorded in two research broiler houses (240 birds equally raised in 12 pens per house). First, a target detection algorithm was used to initially detect the target areas in each image, and then Hough transform and color features were used to remove the occlusion equipment in the detection result further. In poultry images, the broiler chicken occluded by equipment has either two areas (TA) or one area (OA). To reconstruct the occluded area of broiler chickens, the linear restoration method and the elliptical fitting restoration method were developed and tested. Three evaluation indices of the overlap rate (OR), false-positive rate (FPR), and false-negative rate (FNR) were used to evaluate the restoration method. From images collected on d2, d9, d16, and d23, about 100-sample images were selected for testing the proposed method. And then, around 80 high-quality broiler areas detected were further evaluated for occlusion restoration. According to the results, the average value of OR, FPR, and FNR for TA was 0.8150, 0.0032, and 0.1850, respectively. For OA, the average values of OR, FPR, and FNR were 0.8788, 0.2227, and 0.1212, respectively. The study provides a new method for restoring occluded chicken areas that can hamper the success of vision-based machine predictions.
Sulfate-based acid amendments are used for treating litter between broiler chicken flocks and during grow-out for in-house ammonia abatement. These amendments reduce litter pH and inhibit ammonia volatilization by converting ammonia to nonvolatile ammonium. Research on the effects of acid amendments on litter microbiota is limited and usually done in microcosms, which do not replicate natural environments. In this study, we determined the changes in bacterial populations present in litter during downtime (the period after a flock was removed and before new broiler chicks were placed) and 24 h before and after the application of a sodium bisulfate (NaHSO 4 )-based amendment. We used DNA sequencing technologies to characterize the litter microbiota, elucidating microbial shifts in litter samples with respect to downtime, litter depth, and NaHSO 4 application. During downtime (∼18 d), the litter microbiota was dominated by Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria. Sodium bisulfate affected the microbiota in the top layer (3 cm) of reused litter topdressed with fresh pine shavings and resulted in an increase in Escherichia spp. and Faecalibacterium spp. and a decrease in members of the phylum Acidobacteria. Furthermore, culturable Escherichia coli decreased by 1.5 log units during downtime, but an increase was observed for topdressed litter after NaHSO 4 was applied. Although the effect of acidifiers on ammonia reduction, bird performance, and litter performance are well documented, their effect on litter bacteria is not well understood. Our results suggest that acidifiers may perturb litter bacteria when topdressed with fresh pine shavings and that further research is required.
In this study, we investigated the dynamics of the ceca and litter microbiome of chickens from post-hatch through pre-harvest. To achieve this, six hundred one-day old Cobb 500 broiler chicks were raised on floor pens for 49 days in two separate houses. We performed short-read and full-length sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene present in the meconium and in cecal and litter samples collected over the duration of the study. In addition, we determined the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) phenotype of Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. isolated from the meconium and the ceca of 49-day old chickens. We monitored the relative humidity, temperature, and ammonia in each house daily and the pH and moisture of litter samples weekly. The overall microbial community structure of the ceca and litter consistently changed throughout the course of the grow-out and correlated with some of the environmental parameters measured (p < 0.05). We found that the ceca and litter microbiome were similar in the two houses at the beginning of the experiment, but over time, the microbial community separated and differed between the houses. When we compared the environmental parameters in the two houses, we found no significant differences in the first half of the growth cycle (day 0–21), but morning temperature, morning humidity, and ammonia significantly differed (p < 0.05) between the two houses from day 22–49. Lastly, the prevalence of AMR in cecal E. coli isolates differed from meconium isolates (p < 0.001), while the AMR phenotype of cecal Enterococcus isolates differed between houses (p < 0.05).
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