A real-time algorithm for acoustic monitoring of ingestive behavior of grazing cattle

Abstract

a b s t r a c tAssessment of both grazing behavior and herbage intake are two very difficult tasks that can be concurrently accomplished by means of accurate detection, classification and measurement of grazing events such as chews, bites and chew-bites. It is well known that acoustic monitoring is among the best methods to automatically quantify and classify ingestive and rumination events in grazing animals. However, most existing methods of signal analysis appear to be computationally complex and costly, and are therefore difficult to implement. In this work, we present and test a novel analysis system called Chew-Bite Real-Time Algorithm (CBRTA) that works fully automatically in real-time to detect and classify ingestive events of grazing cattle. The system employs a directional wide-frequency microphone facing inwards on the forehead of animals, and a coupled signal analysis and decision logic algorithm that measures shape, amplitude, duration and energy of sound signals to iteratively detect and classify ingestive events. Performance and validation of the CBRTA was determined using two databases of grazing signals. Signals were recorded on dairy cows offered either, natural pasture (N ¼ 25), or experimental micro-swards in indoor controlled environment (N ¼ 50). The CBRTA exhibited a simple linear complexity capable to execute 50 times faster than real-time and without undermining overall recognition rate and accuracy when signals were processed at 4 kHz sampling frequency and 8 bits quantization. Furthermore, CBRTA was capable to detect ingestive events with a 97.4% success rate, while achieving up to 84.0% success for their classification as exclusive chews, bites or composite chew-bites. The methodology proposed with CBRTA has promising application in embedded microcomputer systems that necessarily depend on fast real-time execution to minimize computational load, power source and storage memory. Such a system can readily facilitate the transmission of processed data through wireless network or the storage in an onboard device.

Animal Welfare Implications of Digital Tools for Monitoring and Management of Cattle and Sheep on Pasture

“…Sensors attached around the animal’s legs can also provide information on the number of steps, lying and standing times and the number of lying bouts. There are a number of techniques for measuring rumination and feeding behaviours, of which the most common are 3D accelerometers, pressure gauges and microphones [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Commercially available systems mainly use 3D accelerometers and microphones.…”

Characterizing Sounds of Different Sources in a Commercial Broiler House

“…Acoustic signal can be a useful tool for learning animal behaviors. Microphones have been widely used to detect the animal behaviors, e.g., foraging of beef cattle [ 27 , 28 ], chewing of dairy cows [ 29 ], and feeding behavior of broilers [ 10 ]. However, using audio signal to determine broiler wing flapping and dustbathing behaviors has not been reported before.…”

Systematic Literature Review of Food-Intake Monitoring in an Aging Population

“…From the execution of the previously defined search string [34] in Scopus, 326 papers were obtained, of which the title, abstract and keywords were evaluated. From those, 107 were rejected according to the established inclusion and exclusion criteria, that is, all works that were not related to food-intake (for example, References [37,38]), or regarding food-intake in animals were excluded (for example References [39,40]).…”