An Automated Tracking and Monitoring System for Laying-Hen Behavioral Research in an Enriched Colony System

摘要

Alternative housing systems for egg production are emerging and increasingly adopted by egg producers in Europe and North America.Enriched colony and aviary housing systems are among those of consideration and adoption.Along with shift to the new housing systems comes the need for specification of the new design parameters that will accommodate the behavioral needs of hens and at the same time maximize the resource utilization and production efficiencies.However, information is seriously lacking regarding the behavioral and production responses of hens to resources allocation in the housing systems, such as feeder space, nest area,and perches.To enable the much-needed research for establishing these system design parameters, a new laboratory equipped with automated tracking and monitoring capabilities for an enriched colony system is being developed at Iowa State University.The research facility features continuous monitoring of water and feed use, perch use, nestbox use, time spent at and frequency of visit to feeders by individual hens in a group-housed setting, and the hens feeding simultaneously.The automated instrumentation system employs ultra-high-frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) sensing, load-cell weighing, video imaging, special engineering assembly, and the associated operation control and data acquisition systems.The first experiment underway that is using the facility is to determine the behavioral responses of laying hens to feeder space-an important design parameter that has received much attention among both producers and animal welfare certification organizations.This paper describes the design and development of the research facility with emphasis on the automated behavioral monitoring system.