Technology and Poultry Welfare

Abstract

Consideration of animal welfare is essential to address the consumers’ demands and for the long term sustainability of commercial poultry. However, assessing welfare in large poultry flocks, to be able to detect potential welfare risks and to control or minimize its impact is difficult. Current developments in technology and mathematical modelling open new possibilities for real-time automatic monitoring of animal welfare and health. New technological innovations potentially adaptable to commercial poultry are appearing, although their practical implementation is still being defined. In this paper, we review the latest technological developments with potential to be applied to poultry welfare, especially for broiler chickens and laying hens. Some of the examples that are presented and discussed include the following: sensors for farm environmental monitoring, movement, or physiological parameters; imaging technologies such as optical flow to detect gait problems and feather pecking; infrared technologies to evaluate birds’ thermoregulatory features and metabolism changes, that may be indicative of welfare, health and management problems. All these technologies have the potential to be implemented at the commercial level to improve birds’ welfare and to optimize flock management, therefore, improving the efficiency of the system in terms of use of resources and, thus, long term sustainability.

How Are Information Technologies Addressing Broiler Welfare? A Systematic Review Based on the Welfare Quality® Assessment

“…New technologies could potentially disrupt the current management practices of farms and management of broiler welfare. Additionally, the poultry meat production chain offers ideal conditions for the application of new technologies, since its management is very similar around the world: the governance structure is vertical, and its cycle of production is relatively short [109].…”

The challenge of incorporating animal welfare in a social life cycle assessment model of European chicken production

“…More recently constructed buildings may also be more likely to employ technology to monitor animal well-being or other farm conditions. More research is needed to understand the implications of handing more responsibility for animal welfare to machines as we head towards greater application of precision livestock farming systems (Ben Sassi et al 2016;Wathes 2009;Wathes et al 2008).…”

Review: Automated techniques for monitoring the behaviour and welfare of broilers and laying hens: towards the goal of precision livestock farming

“…Furthermore, advanced data processing techniques make it possible to analyse animal behaviour continuously, automatically, accurately and in real time (Valletta et al, 2017;Van Hertem et al, 2017). Ben Sassi et al (2016) reviewed the sensors and technologies for poultry welfare monitoring based on the literature prior to 2015. The review emphasised that the monitoring technologies could be implemented at the commercial level but did not analyse the difficulties of commercial application.…”