Towards the development of a practical visualisation tool for farmers and other stakeholders

There is a growing global awareness of welfare conditions in animal production and a tendency towards more intensive production, often perceived to have lower welfare conditions, resulting in a need for more precise monitoring. Monitoring methods based on image and sound analysis are interesting for the farmers and other stakeholders to potentially improve animal welfare, increase technical results and minimize the carbon footprint. However, most farmers and other stakeholders (e.g. vets) do not currently have the skills and time to utilize these technologies effectively. It is time consuming to combine and analyse the data resulting from different sensors in different formats and frequencies. As part of the EU-PLF project, the authors have developed a visualization tool to bring together the scattered data, analyse the data and present them in an easy to use format to the end user. The aim of the EU-PLF project is to create added value for the farmer, improve animal welfare, and reduce emissions through the application of sensors and information technology (PLF). The data was collected at 5 broiler farms and 10 pig farms across Europe. At the farms, a number of variables were automatically measured including climate data (temperature, relative humidity, and ventilation rate), production data (feed supply, water consumption, and animal weight), environmental data (dust and ammonia), and data coming from cameras and microphones. Simultaneously, the welfare of the animals was assessed by trained assessors on a regular basis (3 times per flock for poultry and every month for pigs). All the data was gathered, stored, processed, and visualized on a website on a daily basis. Emphasis has been placed on reducing the time between data acquisition and delivery of value-added products to farmers, and providing training so that the end users could understand how to interpret the information. The farmers participated actively in evaluating the usefulness, resulting in a web-based visualization tool that is practical and useful for both the farmer and other stakeholders (e.g. vets, advisors, research).

ISBN:9788890975325

Toegankelijkheid:Closed