Original paper: A real-time automated system for monitoring individual feed intake and body weight of group housed turkeys

  • Authors:

  • Xuyong Tu;Shuxin Du;Lie Tang;Hongwei Xin;Ben Wood

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, 203 Davidson Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA;Department of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China;Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, 203 Davidson Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA;Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, 203 Davidson Hall, Ames, IA 50011, USA;Hybrid Turkeys, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada N2K 3S2 and Department of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada N1G 2W1

  • Venue:
  • Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Feed conversion is an important production trait in turkey breeding; the measurement of an individual bird's feed efficiency is important in identifying the most genetically superior individual. The development of a real-time automated feed intake and body weight monitoring system is described in this paper. The system integrated multiple feed and body weight weighing stations consisting of electronic scales, radio frequency identification (RFID) devices and data communication modules. A distributed and client-server-based system architecture with multi-threading software design was developed. This system architecture allowed for a real-time data acquisition capability when a large number of stations were required. A structured query language (SQL) database management system was developed to record and manage the dynamic feed intake and body weight gain data of individual birds. The developed system also offers a powerful research tool for studying poultry feeding behavior under group housing conditions.