New wearable sensor technology – nicknamed “Fitbits for chickens” – could help make it easier for farmers to monitor poultry welfare by serving as an early warning system for the northern fowl mite.
“This is a tool that helps me to understand how mites are negatively affecting the health and the welfare of the birds,” explain Amy Murillo, an entomologist at University of California, Riverside.
“Northern fowl mite infestations occur across all types of egg production, whether caged, cage-free or free-range.”
Northern fowl mites
Northern fowl mites are one of many ectoparasites that have increased with the growing number of alternative housing systems coming online in the last few years. They can lead to several problems, including spreading disease, decreases in egg production and compromised immune systems.
“Northern fowl mites live on chickens. They feed on blood to develop and reproduce. This is an obligate relationship for the mites. Through blood feeding, they cause damage to the bird and can result in lower egg production and reduced feed conversion efficiency,” Murillo said.
How it works
The research team hypothesized that chickens with northern fowl mite infestations would increase preening and dustbathing behaviors to try to keep feathers clean.
They designed motion sensors that fit into backpacks that the chickens could wear and collected preening and dustbathing behavior data.
“What’s unique about our project is that we use the sensors to monitor for very specific behavior, not just general activity. It took a lot of training – and chickens aren’t always terribly trainable,” she said.
Traditional animal behavior studies rely on human observation, which is time consuming or prone to error. The new system analyzes the data using a custom computer algorithm, resulting in a more objective approach.
For this study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers coupled the computer algorithm with visual observation to show that a chicken flock increased cleaning behaviors during a mite infestation. The data revealed that preening and dust bathing went back to normal levels once the birds were treated.
“There’s definitely a lot of directions for where this technology could be applied,” Murillo said. “We’re talking about a future project using sensors that collects real time data to help us detect other environmental or health-related changes that are behaviorally-driven.”
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