A Real-Time Automated System for Monitoring Individual Feed Intake and Body Weight of Group-Housed Young Chickens

Abstract

The feeding behavior of poultry at a young age is very likely to determine the final growth of the chicken, and can also reflect the feeding status and the health status. It is also of great significance for breeding. This paper describes the development and testing of a real-time automated system and a single passage for monitoring the individual feed intake and body weight of poultry. This system integrates an automatic feeding mechanism, an RFID reading module, a weight scale, a feed scale, and a drop weighting scale. The system uses analog circuits and digital filtering to improve the weighing accuracy, and directly measures the amount of feed falling to the ground using a high-precision weighing scale. Through the sequential opening and closing of a sliding door, group-housed chickens are separated so that the young ones are fed individually. As a result of the experiment, we learned that a young chicken grows at a rate of about 8.88 g/day, and the food conversion rate (FCR) is about 4.4, which proves that this system matches the single passage and can accurately monitor the body weight change and feeding behavior of young chickens.