Subject: Electronics

Animal board invited review: Quantification of resilience in farm animals

M. Taghipoor, M. Pastell, O. Martin, H. Nguyen Ba, J. van Milgen, A. Doeschl-Wilson, C. Loncke, N.C. Friggens, L. Puillet, R. Muñoz-Tamayo

Published in 2023

Scientific article on the detection and quantification of the responses of farm animals to changes in their environment as a means to classify them individually according to their level of resilience. To this purpose, the authors analyze the use of different modeling approaches to data generation from high-throughput recordings.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Category of animals: Bovines, Caprines, Ovines, Porcines

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Welfare indicators, Modelling, Resilience, Stress

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Farmers' Perspectives of the Benefits and Risks in Precision Livestock Farming in the EU Pig and Poultry Sectors

Idan Kopler, Uri Marchaim, Ildikó E. Tikász, Sebastian Opaliński, Eugen Kokin, Kevin Mallinger, Thomas Neubauer, Stefan Gunnarsson, Claus Soerensen, Clive J. C. Phillips, Thomas Banhazi

Published in 2023

Scientific review of the acceptability to farmers of operational principles and technological solutions designed improve both animal and human welfare in the pork and poultry industries.

Document Types: Scientific review

Animal categories: Porcines, Poultry

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Welfare indicators, One Welfare

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Recognition of aggressive behavior of group-housed pigs based on CNN-GRU hybrid model with spatio-temporal attention mechanism

Yue Gao, Kai Yan, Baisheng Dai, Hongmin Sun, Yanling Yin, Runze Liu, Weizheng Shen

Published in 2023

Scientific article proposing a model for automatic video recognition of aggressive behavior in group-housed pigs, with an accuracy rate of 94.8%.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories:Pigs, Primates

Keywords:Aggression, Aggressiveness, Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Welfare indicators, Personality, Stress

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European Parliament: Written answer to Question E-001976/23: Cat and dog welfare - identification (microchipping) and registration

Question: Francisco Guerreiro (Greens/EFA). Answer: Ms Kyriakides on behalf of the European Commission

Published in 2023

Answer to a question on whether the European Commission has assessed the feasibility of requiring microchip identification for dogs and cats from commercial breeders,  and of setting up an official database for compulsory identification and registration before they leave the breeding establishments.

Document types: Regulation/Certification

Animal categories: Canines, Felines

Keywords:Animal trade, Population management, Identification, Societal issues

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A two-stage recognition method based on deep learning for sheep behavior

Zishuo Gu, Haoyu Zhang, Zhiqiang He, Kai Niu

Published in 2023

Scientific article on a method to detect sheep behavior based on deep learning. It recognizes six types of sheep behavior, three corresponding to normal physiological activities (standing, feeding and lying down) and three behaviors considered to be disruptive (attacking, biting and climbing) that require immediate action from the farmer.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Ovines

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Welfare indicators, Human-animal relationships

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Analysis of Various Facial Expressions of Horses as a Welfare Indicator Using Deep Learning

Su Min Kim, Gil Jae Cho

Published in 2023

Article using deep learning to identify various facial expressions that can be used as indicators of welfare in horses. It proposes a model for the automatic recognition of facial expressions including the eyes, nose and ears, to identify horses in various situations: at rest, in pain, immediately after exercise and during shoeing.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Equines

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Castration, Pain, Precision farming, Welfare indicators, Sterilization

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Improved cattle behaviour monitoring by combining Ultra-Wideband location and accelerometer data

S. Benaissa, F.A.M. Tuyttens, D. Plets, L. Martens, L. Vandaele, W. Joseph, B. Sonck

Published in 2023

Scientific paper presenting an effective method to integrate in-building ultra-wideband (UWB) location and accelerometer data, thereby improving cattle behavior monitoring systems.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Bovines

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Microbiota, Welfare indicators

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Development of a data-driven method for assessing health and welfare in the most common livestock species in Switzerland: The Smart Animal Health project

Beat Thomann, Hanno Würbel, Tahibault Kuntzer, Christina Umstätter, Beat Wechsler, Mireille Meylan, Gertraud Schüpbach-Regula

Published in 2023

Article describing how a method was developed to assess health and welfare on individual Swiss livestock farms using information from agricultural databases and supervised machine learning. This method made it possible to score the animal health and welfar management performance of farms in a way comparable to on-farm assessment by trained staff.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Ovines, Porcines, Poultry

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Livestock farming system, Welfare indicators

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Automatic monitoring and detection of tail-biting behavior in groups of pigs using video-based deep learning methods

Franziska Hakansson, Dan Børge Jensen

Published in 2023

Scientific paper developing computer visualization methods for the early detection of tail biting in pigs. The authors use a convolutional neural network to extract spatial data, combined with secondary networks to take account of temporal data.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Porcines

Keywords:Animal-based measurements, Precision farming, Societal issues, Mutilation, Stress

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Electric shock control of farmed animals: Welfare review and ethical critique

D. Grumett, A. Butterworth

Published in 2022

Scientific article presenting the available methods to control or confine of farm animals through the use of electric shocks and reminding readers that their use, which is likely to cause pain, must be ethically justifiable and provide clear welfare benefits. It sets out the potential welfare implications of each method.

Document Types: Scientific paper

Animal categories: Bovines, Caprines, Equines, Ovines, Porcines, Poultry

Keywords:Adaptation of the animal to the environment, Pain, Societal issues, Restraint equipment, Human-animal relationships, Stress

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