Review of Sensor Technologies in Animal Breeding: Phenotyping Behaviors of Laying Hens to Select Against Feather Pecking

Abstract

Damaging behaviors, like feather pecking (FP), have large economic and welfare consequences in the commercial laying hen industry. Selective breeding can be used to obtain animals that are less likely to perform damaging behavior on their pen-mates. However, with the growing tendency to keep birds in large groups, identifying specific birds that are performing or receiving FP is difficult. With current developments in sensor technologies, it may now be possible to identify laying hens in large groups that show less FP behavior and select them for breeding. We propose using a combination of sensor technology and genomic methods to identify feather peckers and victims in groups. In this review, we will describe the use of “-omics” approaches to understand FP and give an overview of sensor technologies that can be used for animal monitoring, such as ultra-wideband, radio frequency identification, and computer vision. We will then discuss the identification of indicator traits from both sensor technologies and genomics approaches that can be used to select animals for breeding against damaging behavior.

Genomewide Mapping of Selection Signatures and Genes for Extreme Feather Pecking in Two Divergently Selected Laying Hen Lines

“…This technique, however, was not applicable in our study because of the relatively large groups with about 40 individually tagged hens. As reviewed by Ellen et al [45], it could already be shown in the PhenoLab project that ultra-wideband as well as video tracking of hens of another HFP and LFP line explored differences in activity of both lines with an accuracy of up to 85% compared to the human observer [46]. It was also possible to detect individual FP hens due to their increased activity levels compared to the victims [46].…”

Assessing the Activity of Individual Group-Housed Broilers Throughout Life Using a Passive Radio Frequency Identification System—A Validation Study

“…Given that broilers are generally housed in large groups in production systems, identification and activity tracking of individual broilers is a challenge. Sensor technologies, such as computer vision (CV), ultra-wideband (UWB) tracking and passive radio frequency identification (RFID) may offer solutions (see [10] for a review of the applicability of sensor technologies for poultry). In particular, passive RFID seems to have potential for tracking individual broilers from the first day of life, as passive RFID tags do not require batteries and can therefore be small and lightweight [11].…”

“…Given the small and lightweight tags of passive RFID systems, passive RFID does have potential for studying birds younger than two weeks old. Passive RFID has already been used for poultry-for example, to study range use, nest box use and feeding behaviour (e.g., [15][16][17]; reviewed in [10]). Passive RFID has also been used to study general locomotor activity [18].…”

Large-Scale Phenotyping of Livestock Welfare in Commercial Production Systems: A New Frontier in Animal Breeding

“…Firstly, continuous monitoring of the animal welfare state from birth to slaughter (or involuntary culling) is needed because animals can be more or less prone to certain welfare issues at specific life stages [e.g., food allergies and gut inflammation after weaning in piglets (Jayaraman and Nyachoti, 2017;Radcliffe et al, 2019), tail biting and aggressive behaviors after mixing pigs in larger groups (Camerlink et al, 2013;Shen et al, 2019), feather pecking in laying hens (Ellen et al, 2019), and age-specific disease occurrences such as mastitis in dairy species (Barkema et al, 2015)]. Therefore, longitudinal phenotypes need to be collected and analyzed (Rauw and Gomez-Raya, 2015;Berghof et al, 2019;Oliveira et al, 2019a).…”