Abstract
The development of feeding systems that can individually measure and control feed intake in a group-housed environment would allow a greater understanding of sheep intake without compromising animal welfare and behavior through the removal of social interactions between sheep. This study validated an automated feeding system for measuring feed intake of individual sheep when housed in groups. Validation of the feeding system was conducted during three separate experiments. The validation sampling involved the activation of four individual “feed events,” whereby four separate samples weighing approximately 50, 100, 200, and 400 g were removed from each feeder, with each feed event being linked to a specific radio frequency identification (RFID) tag. The feeder validation experiments evaluated the ability of the feeding system to 1) create a unique feed event every time a sample of pellets was collected from the feeder, 2) link the feed event to the correct RFID, and 3) accurately record the weight of feed that was manually removed. All feed events were initiated and logged in the feeding system with 100% of the events being linked to the correct test RFID. Concordance correlation coefficients between the feeding system-recorded feed weight and the manually removed weight were 0.99 within all three experiments. There was also no overall and little level-dependent bias between the weights measured by the feeding system and weights measured on the external scales. These results indicate the stability of the feeding system over time and consistency between the feeders within and across the three experiments. In conclusion, the automated feeding system developed for measuring individual animal feed intake was able to detect and record the unique electronic RFID associated with unique feed events and accurately capture the weight of feed removed. Furthermore, there was no change in the accuracy of the system from the start to the end of experimental periods, and the amount of feed removed in the feed event (or meal size) did not impact the accuracy of the results.
Highlights
Understanding feed intake of sheep has significant implications for nutritional management; most data that underpins feedingTechnical note: individual feeding system for sheep housed in groups standards have been collected from sheep that have been individually housed and fed
We hypothesized that the described automated feeding system would determine individual feed events, including the logging of a feed event and the identity of the animal feeding and that there would be no overall or level-dependent bias between the weight of feed samples collected and measured by the automated feeding system and the weight of the same feed samples measured on an external scale
The feeder validation performed in these experiments evaluated four key parameters that could impact on the accuracy of feed intake results obtained using automated feeding stations and include: 1) radio frequency identification (RFID) detection, 2) the correlation between the weight of the feed consumed measured by the feeding system and manually, 3) whether there was any general bias associated with the feeding system, and 4) whether there was any level-dependent bias
Summary
Technical note: individual feeding system for sheep housed in groups standards have been collected from sheep that have been individually housed and fed. This is time consuming, labor intensive and expensive, resulting in restrictions on the number of animals that can be measured at a given time. Malik et al (1996) grouped lambs of the same genotype in pens of four and calculated intakes on a pen average basis While this approach did not compromise animal performance, compared to individually penned animals, the quality of feed intake data was limited due to its inability to account for individual animal variation
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