Automatic Assessment of Keel Bone Damage in Laying Hens at the Slaughter Line

Keel bone damage (KBD) can be found in all commercial laying hen flocks with a wide range of 23% to 69% of hens/flock found to be affected in this study. As KBD may be linked with chronic pain and a decrease in mobility, it is a serious welfare problem. An automatic assessment system at the slaughte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Animals (Basel) 2021-01, Vol.11 (1), p.163
Main Authors: Jung, Lisa, Nasirahmadi, Abozar, Schulte-Landwehr, Jan, Knierim, Ute
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Algorithms
Animal welfare
animal welfare assessment
Animals
Automation
Cameras
Chronic pain
Deviation
Fractures
Genetics
health indicators
keel bone damage
laying hen
laying hen health
Long bone
Optimization
Pain
Poultry
precision livestock farming
Slaughter
Straight lines
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Summary:Keel bone damage (KBD) can be found in all commercial laying hen flocks with a wide range of 23% to 69% of hens/flock found to be affected in this study. As KBD may be linked with chronic pain and a decrease in mobility, it is a serious welfare problem. An automatic assessment system at the slaughter line could support the detection of KBD and would have the advantage of being standardized and fast scoring including high sample sizes. A 2MP stereo camera combined with an IDS imaging color camera was used for the automatic assessment. A trained human assessor visually scored KBD in defeathered hens during the slaughter process and compared results with further human assessors and automatic recording. In a first step, an algorithm was developed on the basis of assessments of keel status of 2287 hens of different genetics with varying degrees of KBD. In two optimization steps, performance data were calculated, and flock prevalences were determined, which were compared between the assessor and the automatic system. The proposed technique finally reached a sensitivity of 0.95, specificity of 0.77, accuracy of 0.86 and precision of 0.81. In the last optimization step, the automatic system scored on average about 10.5% points lower KBD prevalences than the human assessor. However, a proposed change of scoring system (setting the limit for KBD at 0.5 cm deviation from the straight line) would lower this deviation. We conclude that the developed automatic scoring technique is a reliable and potentially valuable tool for the assessment of KBD.
ISSN:2076-2615
2076-2615
DOI:10.3390/ani11010163