Individual Pig Activity Tracking in Group Housed Swine Offers a Deeper Understanding of Swine Production

摘要

Advanced detection and intervention of compromised (immune or injury) pigs significantly increases the probability for recovery in addition to the potential for reducing disease transmission spread or subsequent injuries. To date, identifying sick orinjured pigs is achieved through visual evaluation by caretakers and has practical limits as to the amount of time they can allot to monitoring each individual pig. With the current capacity of many production systems and the labor to pig ratio, it is estimated that on a daily basis a caretaker spends an average of two seconds to visually inspect an individual pig. Additionally, animals have shown the ability to conceal the early symptoms of health challenges further limiting the caretaker's ability toidentify early onset signs of a compromised pig.