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Introduction The laying hen industry is shifting from conventional caged to cage-free (CF) housing due to various welfare concerns and public demand to improve poultry behavior and welfare. The CF housing can improve welfare by providing more space and chances to perform natural behaviors, but there are some serious downsides to bird welfare and problematic…
Posted in: Precision animal production -
Introduction The spatial distribution of laying hens in cage-free houses is an indicator of flock’s health and welfare. While larger space allows chickens to perform more natural behaviors such as dustbathing, foraging, and perching in cage-free houses, an inherent challenge is evaluating chickens’ spatial distribution (e.g., real-time birds’ number on perches or in nesting boxes).…
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Introduction While CF house allows hens to perform more natural behaviors (e.g., dust bathing, perching and foraging on the litter floor), a particular challenge is floor eggs (i.e., mislaid eggs on litter floor). Floor eggs have high chances of contamination. The manual collection of eggs is laborious and time-consuming. Delayed floor egg collection may lead…
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Introduction Animal feeding operations are important sources of air pollutant emissions into the environment. The primary air emissions include particulate matter (PM) and other gases like greenhouse gases and ammonia (NH3), as these gases pose a high potential risk to air quality, public and animal health, and climate change. Among these air pollutants, PM is…
Posted in: Climate Smart Poultry Production -
Ammonia Issues in Poultry Houses Confined animal feeding operations are the main sources of air pollutants such as ammonia (NH3) and greenhouse gases. Among air pollutants, NH3 is one of the most concerned gasses in terms of air quality, environmental impacts, and manure nutrient losses. It is recommended that NH3 concentrations in the poultry house…
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US Egg production is transitioning from conventional cage to cage-free system. While cage-free system allows birds to perform natural behaviors such as dustbathing, foraging, and perching, an inherent challenge is feather pecking (FP, Figure 1). Pecking is one of the primary welfare issues in commercial cage-free hen houses as that can seriously reduce the well-being…
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Broiler production and issues: The world’s population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050 and the requirement for animal products (e.g., meat, eggs, and milk) will be increased by 70% as compared to 2005 levels. As indicated, it is challenging to improve animal production efficiency and product quality under limited natural resources (e.g., fresh…
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Poultry Production and Sustainability: Currently, the United States (US) is the world’s largest broiler producer and second largest egg producer with the annual sale value of $40 billion. Georgia is the largest poultry producing state in the US. However, the current poultry and egg production is facing emerging challenges such as environmental impacts (i.e., greenhouse…
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Daily routine evaluation of chickens (e.g., broilers and layers) are critical for maintaining animals’ health and welfare in commercial poultry houses. For laying hen production, it is becoming more challenging under cage–free production systems (Figure 1) as compare to conventional caged hens (Figure 2) because birds have freedoms to move in a larger space and…
Posted in: poultry monitoring -
Broiler production management with robots Currently, the United States is the world’s largest broiler producer with the annual sales of $40 billion. Modern broiler production is facing emerging challenges of animal health, food safety, environmental impact, and increasing concern from the general public on animal welfare. Fast growth rate and heavier body weights of broilers…
Posted in: Precision animal production