Automatic Detection of Group Recumbency in Pigs via AI-Supported Camera Systems

SIMPLE SUMMARY: For this study, several pens of weaned piglets were recorded with cameras on a commercial farm. The goal was to use velocity data to establish an automated method of identifying when all animals are lying down. This automated method had an accuracy of 94.1%. This method can benefit modern farm management and highlight otherwise overlooked conditions in the barn. ABSTRACT: The resting behavior of rearing pigs provides information about their perception of the current temperature. A pen that is too cold or too warm can impact the well-being of the animals as well as their physical development. Previous studies that have automatically recorded animal behavior often utilized body posture. However, this method is error-prone because hidden animals (so-called false positives) strongly influence the results. In the present study, a method was developed for the automated identification of time periods in which all pigs are lying down using video recordings (an AI-supported camera system). We used velocity data (measured by the camera) of pigs in the pen to identify these periods. To determine the threshold value for images with the highest probability of containing only recumbent pigs, a dataset with 9634 images and velocity values was used. The resulting velocity threshold (0.0006020622 m/s) yielded an accuracy of 94.1%. Analysis of the testing dataset revealed that recumbent pigs were correctly identified based on velocity values derived from video recordings. This represents an advance toward automated detection from the previous manual detection method.