The chicken and the tag : Automated individual-level activity tracking and the relationships between activity, body weight and leg health in broilers

Animal agriculture, including broiler farming, has intensified to meet the increasing demand for livestock products. The resulting large numbers of animals per farm make keeping track of individual broiler activity challenging. However, individual activity records are of great relevance for assessing broiler welfare and for implementation of activity in broiler breeding programs. In this thesis, it was studied whether, and how, detailed activity data on individual group-housed broilers could be collected in an automated manner throughout life. To this end, both an ultra-wideband (UWB) and a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking system were implemented to collect data on distances moved by individual broilers. The recorded distances were compared to distances recorded on video. Both systems showed moderate to good agreement with video and with each other. However, RFID worked with smaller, more lightweight tags and could therefore be implemented earlier in life than UWB. Using the collected activity data, the relationships between activity, leg health and body weight were studied, with the ultimate goal of examining whether selecting on activity to improve health and welfare of broilers would be feasible. Using UWB data, general indications for relationships between gait classification and activity were observed, with lower activity levels for birds with a suboptimal gait, but an interaction with body weight was also observed. It remained difficult to distinguish gait classifications based solely on distance moved. Using RFID data, the relationship between activity patterns early in life and average daily gain (ADG) was further looked into. A negative correlation between ADG and the root mean square error of activity was observed, indicating that broilers with more deviations, in both directions, from the expected linear trend in activity had a lower ADG. RFID data were also used to estimate the heritability of activity. An estimated heritability of 0.31 was observed across the full production period. Overall, the results of this thesis improve our understanding of the relationships between activity, leg health and body weight in broilers and could in the future potentially help to improve broiler (leg) health and welfare, through selection on activity. Potential directions for future implementation of activity tracking in larger scale broiler systems include less detailed RFID tracking and a sensor-fusion approach of RFID and computer vision.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	van der Sluis, Malou
Other Authors:	Rodenburg, T.B.
Format:	Doctoral thesis biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Wageningen University
Subjects:	Life Science,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/the-chicken-and-the-tag-automated-individual-level-activity-track
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