2 research outputs found
Extracting Accurate Long-Term Behavior Changes from a Large Pig Dataset
Visual observation of uncontrolled real-world behavior leads to noisy observations, complicated by occlusions, ambiguity, variable motion rates, detection and tracking errors, slow transitions between behaviors, etc. We show in this paper that reliable estimates of long-term trends can be extracted given enough data, even though estimates from individual frames may be noisy. We validate this concept using a new public dataset of approximately 20+ million daytime pig observations over 6 weeks of their main growth stage, and we provide annotations for various tasks including 5 individual behaviors. Our pipeline chains detection, tracking and behavior classification combining deep and shallow computer vision techniques. While individual detections may be noisy, we show that long-term behavior changes can still be extracted reliably, and we validate these results qualitatively on the full dataset. Eventually, starting from raw RGB video data we are able to both tell what pigs main daily activities are, and how these change through time
Can increased dietary fibre level and a single enrichment device reduce the risk of tail biting in undocked growing-finishing pigs in fully slatted systems?
peer-reviewedThis study evaluated the effectiveness of combined dietary and enrichment strategies to
manage tail biting in pigs with intact tails in a conventional fully-slatted floor housing system.
A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design was used. Pigs had either a high fibre (weaner 5.3% and finisher
11.6% of crude fibre) or standard fibre diet (weaner 3.7% and finisher 5.9% of crude fibre).
In the weaner stage, pigs had either a spruce wooden post (supplied in a wall-mounted dispenser) or a rubber floor toy as a enrichment device, and in the finisher stage, they had
either the same or alternate enrichment item. Six hundred and seventy-two pigs were
assigned to 48 pens of 14 pigs and followed from weaning until slaughter. Individual tail
lesion scores and pen level behaviours were directly recorded every 2 weeks. Twenty-six
pens had tail biting outbreaks and 161 injured pigs needed removal for treatment. Pigs fed
with the high fibre diet performed more tail biting (p < 0.05) and tended to have a worse tail
damage scores than those fed the standard fibre diet (p = 0.08). Pigs which had the floor toy
as weaners and wood as finishers tended to have fewer tail lesions in the finisher stage than
their counterparts (p = 0.06). Pigs receiving the floor toy as enrichment interacted with the
enrichment more frequently overall (p < 0.001) and performed fewer harmful behaviours in
the weaner stage (p < 0.05). Overall, higher fibre in the diet in a relatively barren environment did not help reduce tail biting or tail lesions. Altering the fibre level in the pigs’ diet and
providing a single enrichment device to undocked pigs on fully slatted floors resulted in a
high level of tail biting and a large proportion of pigs with partial tail amputation.Teagas