Farmscape for October 15, 2021

A Swine Extension Veterinarian with Michigan State University says the use of artificial intelligence offers an opportunity to track the indicators of the health and welfare of pigs in real time to identify problems and trigger timely interventions.
"Precision Livestock Farming: Merging Historical and Real-Time Information to Improve Efficiency, Health and Welfare" will be among the topics discussed as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2021 set for November 16 and 17 in Saskatoon.
Dr. Madonna Benjamin an Associate Professor, Swine Extension Veterinarian with Michigan State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, says computers connected to monitoring equipment can be programed to identify indicators of developing problems in real time.

Clip-Dr. Madonna Benjamin-Michigan State University:
The hope is to be able to identify animals individually and to do that using sensors such as microphones and cameras and accelerometers to pick up information that we were not able to use before the opportunities within artificial intelligence.
The sensors are then linked to a computer, computer processors and then algorithms are developed behind that so the information can be translated from the sensor and when I say sensor that could be, as I mentioned, a camera or a microphone etcetera and then translated into outcomes.
The real drive for precision livestock is that, at least from my mind from a health and welfare perspective, is the hope that we can treat individual animals within a population.

Dr. Benjamin acknowledges animal behavior has been used for a long time to identify potential problems but it takes a long time to process the information.
She says, with the addition of artificial intelligence, we can process that information through a computer system to identify developing problems such as lameness or sickness.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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