Optical flow patterns in broiler chicken flocks as automated measures of behaviour and gait

Dawkins, Marian Stamp; Lee, Hyoung-joo; Waitt, Corri; Roberts, Stephen

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2009.04.009

Cited by 94 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…One promising approach is 'optical flow', which estimates animal activity by quantifying overall pixel changes from moment to moment in a video image. 'Optical flow' has been used to detect the reduced activity of lame broiler chickens (Dawkins et al, 2009), and the disturbance of behaviour in laying hen flocks when feather pecking is occurring (Lee et al, 2011).…”

Section: Early Detection and Targeted Preventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Injurious tail biting in pigs: how can it be controlled in existing systems without tail docking?

D’Eath

Arnott

Turner

et al. 2014

Animal

148

143

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Tail biting is a serious animal welfare and economic problem in pig production. Tail docking, which reduces but does not eliminate tail biting, remains widespread. However, in the EU tail docking may not be used routinely, and some 'alternative' forms of pig production and certain countries do not allow tail docking at all. Against this background, using a novel approach focusing on research where tail injuries were quantified, we review the measures that can be used to control tail biting in pigs without tail docking. Using this strict criterion, there was good evidence that manipulable substrates and feeder space affect damaging tail biting. Only epidemiological evidence was available for effects of temperature and season, and the effect of stocking density was unclear. Studies suggest that group size has little effect, and the effects of nutrition, disease and breed require further investigation. The review identifies a number of knowledge gaps and promising avenues for future research into prevention and mitigation. We illustrate the diversity of hypotheses concerning how different proposed risk factors might increase tail biting through their effect on each other or on the proposed underlying processes of tail biting. A quantitative comparison of the efficacy of different methods of provision of manipulable materials, and a review of current practices in countries and assurance schemes where tail docking is banned, both suggest that daily provision of small quantities of destructible, manipulable natural materials can be of considerable benefit. Further comparative research is needed into materials, such as ropes, which are compatible with slatted floors. Also, materials which double as fuel for anaerobic digesters could be utilised. As well as optimising housing and management to reduce risk, it is important to detect and treat tail biting as soon as it occurs. Early warning signs before the first bloody tails appear, such as pigs holding their tails tucked under, could in future be automatically detected using precision livestock farming methods enabling earlier reaction and prevention of tail damage. However, there is a lack of scientific studies on how best to respond to outbreaks: the effectiveness of, for example, removing biters and/or bitten pigs, increasing enrichment, or applying substances to tails should be investigated. Finally, some breeding companies are exploring options for reducing the genetic propensity to tail bite. If these various approaches to reduce tail biting are implemented we propose that the need for tail docking will be reduced.

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Section: Early Detection and Targeted Preventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Injurious tail biting in pigs: how can it be controlled in existing systems without tail docking?

D’Eath

Arnott

Turner

et al. 2014

Animal

148

143

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“…the amount of movement is not enough, because the mean level of optical flow is not, on its own, sufficient to predict later hockburn at least until 15 days [7]. It is only with the full predictive power of all the available optical flow measures that the model provides that flocks at risk of hockburn can be identified.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is used as a measure of welfare in its own right because, although usually assessed post mortem, it gives an indication of the conditions that have been experienced by a bird during its lifetime [11]. The first signs of hockburn may appear as early as two weeks of age [12] and an indication that a flock that will end up with a high % of hockburn in birds after slaughter include the weight and density of the birds at two weeks [13] and high skew and kurtosis of optical flow at the same age [7]. By predicting which flocks will have later hockburn problems from optical flow information in the first few days of life, the model thus seems to be able to give a warning at a very early stage, before overt symptoms appear.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The skew and kurtosis of optical flow, taken separately, allow prediction of which flocks are likely to be scored as having a high % of poor walkers over a week before the gait scoring is actually carried out, i.e. on day 18-20 when gait scoring is done on day 28 [7]. The model, however, allows such predictions to be made much earlier in the birds lives when they are only 5 or 6 days old-over three weeks before actual gait scoring was carried out.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prediction of welfare outcomes for broiler chickens using Bayesian regression on continuous optical flow data

Roberts

Cain

Dawkins

2012

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Currently, assessment of broiler (meat) chicken welfare relies largely on labour-intensive or post-mortem measures of welfare. We here describe a method for continuously and robustly monitoring the welfare of living birds while husbandry changes are still possible. We detail the application of Bayesian modelling to motion data derived from the output of cameras placed in commercial broiler houses. We show that the forecasts produced by the model can be used to accurately assess certain key aspects of the future health and welfare of a flock. The difference between healthy flocks and less-healthy ones becomes predictable days or even weeks before clinical symptoms become apparent. Hockburn (damaged leg skin, usually only seen in birds of two weeks or older) can be well predicted in flocks of only 1-2 days of age, using this approach. Our model combines optical flow descriptors of bird motion with robust multivariate forecasting and provides a sparse, efficient model with sparsity-inducing priors to achieve maximum predictive power with the minimum number of key variables.

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“…We show that a disturbance profile can be generated for a flock based on optical flow measures of the movements of the birds [12] and the use of hidden Markov models (HMMs; [13]). We then show that this disturbance profile, together with other measures such as the age of the birds, has predictive power as to which flocks will develop severe feather damage in the future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of feather damage in laying hens using optical flows and Markov models

Lee

Roberts

Drake

et al. 2010

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Feather pecking in laying hens is a major welfare and production problem for commercial egg producers, resulting in mortality, loss of production as well as welfare issues for the damaged birds. Damaging outbreaks of feather pecking are currently impossible to control, despite a number of proposed interventions. However, the ability to predict feather damage in advance would be a valuable research tool for identifying which management or environmental factors could be the most effective interventions at different ages. This paper proposes a framework for forecasting the damage caused by injurious pecking based on automated image processing and statistical analysis. By frame-by-frame analysis of video recordings of laying hen flocks, optical flow measures are calculated as indicators of the movement of the birds. From the optical flow datasets, measures of disturbance are extracted using hidden Markov models. Based on these disturbance measures and age-related variables, the levels of feather damage in flocks in future weeks is predicted. Applying the proposed method to real-world datasets, it is shown that the disturbance measures offer improved predictive values for feather damage thus enabling an identification of flocks with probable prevalence of damage and injury later in lay.

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Optical flow patterns in broiler chicken flocks as automated measures of behaviour and gait

Cited by 94 publications

References 31 publications

Injurious tail biting in pigs: how can it be controlled in existing systems without tail docking?

Injurious tail biting in pigs: how can it be controlled in existing systems without tail docking?

Prediction of welfare outcomes for broiler chickens using Bayesian regression on continuous optical flow data

Prediction of feather damage in laying hens using optical flows and Markov models

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