Avara Foods will partner with technology startup Beakbook for a five-month pilot project testing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve welfare and productivity on poultry farms.
“Bird welfare is an area where we set high standards and are committed to invest in opportunities for continual improvement,” said Samuel Laing, Avara Foods agricultural technology development officer. “Upon successful completion and committee review, we are excited to look at opportunities to scale their technology across our operations.”
The project will compare data from over 400 million chickens with the results of an automated poultry weighing system. In addition, the study will measure the accuracy of AI in predicting stocking density with machine learning.
The poultry weight monitoring technology integrates machine learning and algorithms to help track and analyze feed conversion and efficiency.
If successful, AI could reduce the number of manual hours needed to analyze farm data by 15%, freeing up workers to perform other tasks.
AI could also provide farmers with another tool for measuring poultry welfare. Stocking density is a metric used to ensure that birds have the room to demonstrate natural behaviors, such as perching and dust bathing.
“The primary bottleneck to achieving digital transformation in agriculture is the availability and accessibility of performance forecasting technology. Beakbook is addressing this systemic lack of analytics options on the market, and predicting crowding levels is the first step. We hope to inspire more young entrepreneurs into AgTech and help strengthen global food security and affordability,” Beakbook co-founder, Giovanni dos Reis Montefiori, said in a statement.
The five-month project is funded by Innovate UK’s Transformative Technologies Award.
With annual slaughterings of 234 million birds, Avara Foods is among the largest poultry companies in Europe, according to WATTPoultry.com’s Top Poultry Companies survey.
