Abstract
Simple SummaryThis research aimed to analyze the possibility of assessing piglets’ welfare using the records of their vocalization. The trial was done in a pig commercial farm, and we recorded the vocal signals from piglets in several stressful exposure situations. Data mining techniques were applied to the processed signals in order to obtain a stress classification using the recorded data. We found that, using the piglets’ vocalization, it was possible to identify the most frequent stressful conditions at the farrowing phase, namely: pain, cold and hunger.Assessing pigs’ welfare is one of the most challenging subjects in intensive pig farming. Animal vocalization analysis is a noninvasive procedure and may be used as a tool for assessing animal welfare status. The objective of this research was to identify stress conditions in piglets reared in farrowing pens through their vocalization. Vocal signals were collected from 40 animals under the following situations: normal (baseline), feeling cold, in pain, and feeling hunger. A unidirectional microphone positioned about 15 cm from the animals’ mouth was used for recording the acoustic signals. The microphone was connected to a digital recorder, where the signals were digitized at the 44,100 Hz frequency. The collected sounds were edited and analyzed. The J48 decision tree algorithm available at the Weka® data mining software was used for stress classification. It was possible to categorize diverse conditions from the piglets’ vocalization during the farrowing phase (pain, cold and hunger), with an accuracy rate of 81.12%. Results indicated that vocalization might be an effective welfare indicator, and it could be applied for assessing distress from pain, cold and hunger in farrowing piglets.
Highlights
It is of great relevance, the assessment of animal welfare status in commercial farming is still a difficult task
The vocalization of piglets is an efficient technique for identifying their stress conditions
The classification task can potentially aid in the discovery of relationships between the characteristics of acoustic signals and distress
Summary
It is of great relevance, the assessment of animal welfare status in commercial farming is still a difficult task. The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) proposed the “Five Freedoms” in order to guarantee the minimal welfare conditions in which the animals must be free from thirst, hunger and malnutrition; free of discomfort, pain, injury and disease; should have the freedom to express normal behavior; and be free from fear and stress. By this approach, it is necessary to develop accurate tools to estimate the animal welfare status and to ensure applicability on field. There are other techniques to recognize stress in animals, e.g., a stress response as an adrenaline release can be accompanied by changes in the rates of specific types of vocalization [7] while other studies suggested an increased rate of vocalization in pigs after receiving corticotrophin injections [8].
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