Chapter 8: AWARTECH project: from laboratory experiments to farm conditions

Abstract

Production intensification with the focus on self-supply or higher competitiveness may lead to decrease animal welfare conditions. Also, intensive production systems, characterized by high animal density, can potentially reduce animal health and welfare, as well as complicate individual monitoring and control process. In this sense, it is important to provide animal producers with precision livestock farming tools that contribute to an efficient management of the production process. These technological tools allow to automatically monitor and control the environmental conditions and the animal’s physiological and behavioural responses. The main objective of the AWARTECH (Animal Welfare Adjusted Real Time Environmental Conditions of Housing) project was to create and develop an innovative precision livestock tool able to support and reinforce the pig value chain, through management solutions based on real time monitoring, analysis and control of environmental, physiological, behavioural and productive parameters. Indoor environmental data was measured (air temperature, relative humidity, velocity and gas concentration), registered and integrated in an environmental control system. The physiological data (pig surface temperature) was automatically collected by thermographic cameras. In order to monitor the animal’s behaviour, video cameras and microphones were installed. An individual feeding machine was installed, allowing, through an RFID system, individual monitoring and control of the food supplied and ingested, the number and duration of visits and the animal’s weight. The AWARTECH Smart Sensing platform results from the integration of those data provided by the animals and of the environmental conditions, in real time. The monitoring and control of these data through an algorithm, allowed to develop actuations orders directed, in real time, to the environmental control systems in order to create the conditions that promote animal welfare and maximise production efficiency.