ENHANCING POULTRY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS THROUGH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND HUSBANDRY PRACTICES

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1020090
• Multistate No.: NE-1942
• Project Start Date: Oct 1, 2019
• Project End Date: Feb 9, 2021
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIV
(N/A)
MISSISSIPPI STATE,MS 39762

Performing Department
Agricultural & Biological Engineering

Non Technical Summary
The rapid growth of the human population requires dramatic increases in the food supply. According to the United Nation, the global population will reach 9.9 billion in 2050 which would need 60% - 110% more agriculture products. However, the yield projected based on the current increasing rates is insufficient to meet the 2050 demand. Farmers worldwide will have to boost agricultural production, either by increasing the amount of agricultural land/facilities or by enhancing productivity with existing resources. Farmers will inevitably rely on advanced tools and technologies to handle challenges in the process of production expansion. Compared to the industry, agriculture has been a sector tardy in applying high-tech engineering systems. In early 80' last century, scientists promoted the concept of 'precision agriculture' which aims to optimize agricultural returns on inputs and preserve resources by observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variabilities with advanced technologies. Since then, precision agriculture has been exhibiting significant impacts to sustainable agricultural production. While most efforts in precision agriculture have been dedicated to crop production, its application and research on animal farming are scarce.The U.S. poultry industry is the world's largest meat producer and the second largest egg producer. Broiler productions exceeded 55 billion pounds of ready-to-cook meat with a value of over $30 billion. As for laying hens, over 8 billion dozen eggs were produced with a $7.5 billion value in 2017. As the scale of poultry production rapidly increases, more labor is required to sustain the industry's growth.The US poultry stakeholders (growers, integrators, researchers, governmental and industrial organizations) have been dedicating unremitting efforts to improve production efficiencies and environmental stewardship, which have economic, environmental and welfare implications. Yet, they are facing challenges that restrain their production and compromise animal welfare.Goals / Objectives: 1) Integrating technological advances into poultry systems. Theemphasis on collaborative and translational research incorporating science, engineering, and technology to enhance system efficiency and sustainability through infrastructure development of blockchain production. 2) Establishing and adopting husbandry practices in a changing industry landscape.Collaborative research will encompass a multi-disciplinary approach to create a resilient poultry production system through optimal management of inputs and outputs in an ethically responsible manner.

Animal Health Component

50%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

50%

Developmental

50%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
306	3299	2020	100%

Knowledge Area
306 - Environmental Stress in Animals;

Subject Of Investigation
3299 - Poultry, general/other;

Field Of Science
2020 - Engineering;

Keywords

poultry

precision livestock farming

welfare

production

Goals / Objectives
Integrating technological advances into poultry systems. This will include collaborative research on incorporating engineering and technology to enhance system efficiency and sustainability through infrastructure development of blockchain production.



Establishing and adopting husbandry practices to a changing industry landscape. This collaborative research will encompass a multi-disciplinary approach to create a resilient poultry production system through optimal management of inputs and outputs in an ethically responsible manner.

Project Methods
Within the research scope of this multistate project, Mississippi (PD Zhao) will work on improving the poultry production efficiency and welfare through conducting a series of laboratory and field experiments and developing automated systems. The project will focus mainly on both broilers (meat type poultry, the largest industry in Mississippi) and laying hens (egg type poultry). PD Zhao has been leading his team to identify the critical environmental, management, and welfare issues that restrain the development and sustainability of the poultry industry. These issues will be addressed by scientific sound research associated with improvement in housing ventilation, air quality, lighting environment, resource utilization,etc. We will utilize state-of-art instrumentationincluding infrared thermal imaging and data acquisition system (DAQ), and modern data analysis technologies, e.g. image processing and data mining. The production performance and behavior of the broilers and laying hens will be evaluated and used as the responses. As public concerns on animal welfare keep increasing, our efforts will also be dedicated to understanding the natural needs of poultry that formulate the baseline of further welfare enhancement. Welfare elements will be developed and their performance will be tested on-site. The research will focus on addressing individual animals rather than a herd, thus identifying the variations among individuals. This is a crucial approach to precision agriculture. In addition, we will spare our efforts in exploring transmission mechanisms of avian pathogenicE. coli. Specifically, we will seek for best solution for sampling airborne E. coli, investigate the prevalence of airborne E. coli in typical broiler and hen houses in the US, and examine the mitigation strategies forairborne E. coli. For all above-mentioned activities, we will seek internal and external collaborations to maximize the likelihood of success.

Progress 10/01/19 to 02/09/21

Outputs
Target Audience:Poultry producers, scientists, students. Changes/Problems:COVID-19 delayed the planned research activities, PI has left Mississippi State University and is now at Unversity of Tennessee. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Trained 4 graduate students and 3 undergraduate students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Through professional conferences, meetings, classrooms, scientific publications in journals and conference proceedings. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Through the research activities by Dr. Yang Zhao in the past year, we understand the interactions of broiler with aerial robotic systems; developed the convolutional neural networks to detect floor eggs in cage-free system; understand the diurnal rhythms of group-housed layer pullets, which help for poultry management; determined the best practices for measuring broiler activity level using image processing technology; and developed image processing technology for monitoring broiler feeding and drinking behaviors.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Accuracy of broiler activity index as affected by sampling time interval X Yang, Y Zhao, GT Tabler Animals 10 (6), 1102, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Effects of antibiotic-free diet and stocking density on male broilers reared to 35 days of age. Part 2: feeding and drinking behaviours of broilers G Li, Y Zhao, JL Purswell, GD Chesser Jr, JW Lowe, TL Wu Journal of Applied Poultry Research 29 (2), 391-401, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Comparative Evaluation of Poultry-Human and Poultry-Robot Avoidance Distances P Parajuli, Y Huang, T Tabler, JL Purswell, JL DuBien, Y Zhao Transactions of the ASABE 63 (2), 477-484, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Analysis of feeding and drinking behaviors of group-reared broilers via image processing G Li, Y Zhao, JL Purswell, Q Du, GD Chesser Jr, JW Lowe Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 175, 105596, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Evaluating convolutional neural networks for cage-free floor egg detection G Li, X Yan, Y Zhao, Q Du, Y Huang Sensors 20 (2), 332, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Diurnal rhythms of group-housed layer pullets with free choices between light and dim environments G Li, B Li, Z Shi, Y Zhao, Q Tong, Y Liu Canadian Journal of Animal Science 100 (1), 37-46, 2020

Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Poultry producers, scientists, students. Changes/Problems:COVID-19 delayed the planned research activities. ? What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Trained 4 graduate students and 3 undergraduate students. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Through professional conferences, meetings, classrooms, scientific publications in journals and conference proceedings. ? What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Through the research activities by Dr. Yang Zhao in the past year, we understand the interactions of broiler with aerial robotic systems; developed the convolutional neural networks to detect floor eggs in cage-free system; understand the diurnal rhythms of group-housed layer pullets, which help for poultry management; determined the best practices for measuring broiler activity level using image processing technology; and developed image processing technology for monitoring broiler feeding and drinking behaviors.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Analysis of feeding and drinking behaviors of group-reared broilers via image processing G Li, Y Zhao, JL Purswell, Q Du, GD Chesser Jr, JW Lowe Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 175, 105596, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Accuracy of broiler activity index as affected by sampling time interval X Yang, Y Zhao, GT Tabler Animals 10 (6), 1102, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Effects of antibiotic-free diet and stocking density on male broilers reared to 35 days of age. Part 2: feeding and drinking behaviours of broilers G Li, Y Zhao, JL Purswell, GD Chesser Jr, JW Lowe, TL Wu Journal of Applied Poultry Research 29 (2), 391-401, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Comparative Evaluation of Poultry-Human and Poultry-Robot Avoidance Distances P Parajuli, Y Huang, T Tabler, JL Purswell, JL DuBien, Y Zhao Transactions of the ASABE 63 (2), 477-484, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Evaluating convolutional neural networks for cage-free floor egg detection G Li, X Yan, Y Zhao, Q Du, Y Huang Sensors 20 (2), 332, 2020
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Diurnal rhythms of group-housed layer pullets with free choices between light and dim environments G Li, B Li, Z Shi, Y Zhao, Q Tong, Y Liu Canadian Journal of Animal Science 100 (1), 37-46, 2020