Monitoring live pig weight with a mobile imaging system

A. Rydberg; M. Gilbertsson

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Monitoring live pig weight with a mobile imaging system

In: Precision Livestock Farming â05

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A. Rydberg

A. Rydberg anna.rydberg@jti.slu.se

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M. Gilbertsson

M. Gilbertsson
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 257â263

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-548-2_032

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Pig husbandry today has to be very efficient to manage the economic demands of finishing pigs. It is important for the farmer to optimize breeding and weight at slaughter in order to reach the weight interval for best payment and delivery increment at the slaughterhouse. To achieve the best economic production, feed consumption, death rate, and time to slaughter have to be minimized. The growth of the herd has to be monitored so that the farmer can control the feeding to reach optimum carcass weight and classification of meat percentage at the slaughterhouse. Ideally, the weight of the pig should be registered daily. Today, it is not possible to complete ordinary weighing daily as it is one of the most stressful, unhealthy, heavy and time demanding elements within pig husbandry.

This paper presents the development of a mobile imaging system for live pig weight estimation in production conditions. The purpose of this project is to investigate if an optical weight estimator can be developed to estimate the individual weight of pigs in the same pen from images containing more than one pig. The optical weight estimator is designed to work in a production environment where transponder feeding is not available. Compared to similar studies, this study concentrates on conditions where several pigs are fed from the same feeding trough at set times, thus a mobile system was used. The adaptability of this mobile system makes it possible to use it in different stable environments.

The optical weight estimator is attached to a carrier and the pigs are monitored during feeding. From the weighing system, pig growth, desired slaughter weight and shape information, as means to assistance in the estimation of meat percentage, can be approximated per pen. To be able to identify pigs ready for slaughter, the farmer has to be present to mark individual pigs that have reached the desired weight. The time for weighing pigs with the optical weight estimator is reduced by approximately 5 hours, from roughly 6 hours to 1 hour for 400 pigs. The relation between area and weight for pigs between 20 and 120 kg was similar to results presented in the literature (r²=0.97).

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Precision Livestock Farming â05

E-Book ISBN:: 9789086865482

Publisher:: Wageningen Academic

Print Publication Date:: 10 Oct 2005

Subjects
- Life Sciences
  - General
  - Animal & Veterinary

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Precision Livestock Farming â05

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