Evaluating a Walk-over-Weighing system for the automatic monitoring of growth in postweaned Mérinos d’Arles ewe lambs under Mediterranean grazing conditions

Live weight (LW) is a key and conventional indicator for monitoring assessing overall animal performance welfare, representing the progress through different physiological stages, while providing close indication of individual physical health status. Measuring LW in practice still, however, quite rare infrequent under commercial sheep farming conditions, mainly because sessions are time-consuming, stressful either operator or animals. A Walk-over-Weighing (WoW) system was tested this experiment lasting 14 weeks (i.e. 3 acclimation adaptation 11 data collection). We validated its use routine frequent growth rate postweaned Merinos d’Arles ewe lambs (n = 100), reared Mediterranean grazing conditions. The necessity an initial period animals confirmed. Also, importance conducting effective cleaning procedure raw database automatically collected by WoW corroborated. Adaptation naive enabled required voluntary passages across weighing platform high volume daily after 2–3 weeks. Close then possible performing sound cleaning. good agreement demonstrated between reference value (measured with standard static scale). At level, even lowest number values WoW, it to monitor variations at intervals. establishment early warning help farmer decision-making could therefore be possible. Our results show interesting prospects more accurate without human intervention, compared what currently carried out on farms.