Document type: article from the conference proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming.
Authors: Joosen, Pieter; Norton, Tomas; Marchant-Forde, Jeremy; Berckmans, Daniel
Preview: Animal welfare is important and Europe has invested a lot in methods to score or monitor animal welfare in commercial livestock houses. A main objective of Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) is to deliver a tool for active mangement of livestock to improve animal welfare and health and to make livestock farming more animal economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. The importance of well managed animal welfare is not limited to the ethical viewpoint but is also crucial to realise a more efficient process to produce animal products. When considering the metabolic energy balance in a homeothermic living organism, there are different components: basal metabolism, the thermal component, the physical component related to movement or delivering power, the production term (meat, milk, eggs) and finally the mental component. When applying the stress monitoring, developed for humans, on animals we see that we can monitor frustration of horses in real-time. This indicates that real-time animal welfare monitoring based upon physiological signals becomes a realistic pathway.
