Monitoring System to Detect Problems in Broiler Houses Based on Image Processing

Abnormal animal behaviour and reduced growth rate in a broiler house are just a few signs that can indicate an undesired situation, such as diseases, technical malfunctioning in feeding and drinking lines and suboptimal management procedures. It is important that the problems be detected in an early stage to avoid harming the welfare or the production of broilers. In this paper, an automated method to detect problems in a broiler house using cameras and an image analysis software is introduced. Three top view cameras mounted in the ridge of a commercial broiler house with 28000 animals continuously monitored the floor space below and the images taken by the cameras were translated into animal distribution index every 5 minutes by analysis software. Based on the distribution index data, a real-time model was developed to predict the normal animal distribution index as a response to the light input. Using this model, an online prediction could be made in real-time as to generate an alarm whenever animal behaviour abnormally deviated from the prediction. Results showed that this method was able to report 95.24 percent of events in real-time, demonstrating a high potential of using automatic monitor tools for broiler production over a complete growing period.