Computacional system to estimate broiler breeders' welfare

• Grant number: 09/10486-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2009
• End date: November 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agricultural Engineering - Rural Buildings and Ambience
• Principal Investigator: Danilo Florentino Pereira
• Grantee: Danilo Florentino Pereira
• Host Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Tupã. Tupã , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Animal welfare is a relevant point to Europeans consumers, as much that, in order to contain the social concerns about the welfare of animals destined to human consumption, the European Union arranged in its legislation several directions and regulations about raising and slaughtering. To attend these regulations, production systems of animal protein will need to adapt and, in some cases, to rethink all the production system, in order to continue commercializing at this market. This research has the propose of develop a computational system, based on fuzzy logic and computational vision, that esteem satisfying the broilers breeders' welfare, analyzing the behaviors expressed by the birds. Constitute specifics objects of this paper: 1) to apply and validity in field conditions a fuzzy system, already developed, to esteem the broiler breeders' welfare in function of frequency and duration of behaviors expressed by the birds; and 2) to create a methodology of frames sequence analyze that contributes to differentiate the behaviors expressed by the broiler breeders. It expected that the results gotten in this research contributes to the development of a specialist system to estimate broiler breeders welfare, and that the computational system that will be developed may, in the future, contribute with the efficiency increasing of the productive system as a whole, promoting a more precise identification of the birds' welfare conditions and, with that, providing actions more efficient to the control of the thermical environment of production. (AU)