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

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.

Research highlights▶ The developed automated feed intake and body weight monitoring system is an effective tool for studying individual turkey feed conversion ratio under group setting. ▶ The real-time functionality of the system also provides possibility on investigating individual and group feeding behavior under group housed environment. ▶ The multi-threading data acquisition program makes the system expandable to a large scale with comparable performance. ▶ The multifunctional data management program offers convenient data processing and flexible accessibility. ▶ The effectiveness and reliability of the system has been proved through live trials.