# Low-Cost IoT and LoRaWAN-Based System for Laying Hen Identification in Family Poultry Farms
## 4 Results and Discussion
### Field Testing
To determine whether an egg-laying event has occurred, the system relies on the duration of the hen's stay inside the nesting box, as recorded by repeated NFC readings: The system monitors egg-laying events by receiving messages triggered when hens enter the nesting boxes. These messages are received at \(s\)-second intervals for the duration of the hen's stay. If the hen enters and exits without laying an egg, the system typically receives only one or two isolated messages. Conversely, if the hen remains in the nesting box for several minutes, the system receives \(m\) messages every \(s\) seconds during that time. In such cases, it is inferred that an egg-laying event has occurred, and the event is recorded accordingly. According to poultry farming literature and the farmer who has participated in this study (an interview is shown in Section 4.4), the average time required for a hen to lay an egg ranges from 10 to 30 min, although this may vary depending on factors such as the hen's age, health, and environmental comfort. Some hens may require longer periods, especially if they are inexperienced layers or stressed. It is important to note that these are living beings, and their behavior can therefore be variable and sometimes unpredictable. Based on this reference framework, the algorithm was configured to infer egg-laying events from the continuity and number of readings during the stay. Furthermore, the time threshold is  
Figure 8: Web application interface displaying the recorded data: visits per hour, per day, and per hen on nesting box usage. Figure 7: Installation and testing of the sensor node (**top** images) and NFC tags (**bottom-left** image) during the field testing phase. fully configurable and can be adjusted to minimize false positives or negatives. Since each hen is individually identified, this parameter could potentially be customized per animal to improve the accuracy of event detection. During the testing period, it was observed that some hens lost their NFC tags. Specifically, two tags were lost over the course of 1 week of continuous operation. In some instances, the tags were accidentally detached, while in others, the hens may have removed them themselves. Although this issue did not affect the stability of the overall system, it highlighted the need for a more robust tagging mechanism. To address this limitation, the use of ring-type tags--commonly employed in bird identification--is being considered as an alternative. These tags are slightly more expensive but offer a more secure attachment and improved durability and can be integrated into the system with minimal modification. Some commercially available models also provide increased reading distances, which could further enhance system performance and reliability in future implementations. An example of this solution is the use of RFID ring tags with ICODE SLIX chips operating at 13.56 MHz (ISO 15693 standard), commonly used for pigeon identification. These tags are compatible with the RC522 RFID reader, offer improved attachment security, and provide reading distances between 3 and 20 cm, depending on positioning and environmental factors. Their adoption could enhance robustness in field conditions, despite a slightly higher cost. While the field testing involved a limited number of hens and nesting boxes, the primary objective of this phase was to validate the technical feasibility of the proposed system and evaluate its performance in a real-world small-scale poultry farm. The sample size allowed for the observation of key functional aspects under actual conditions. Although the results obtained from this proof of concept are not intended to be statistically generalizable, we confirm the feasibility of the proposed IoT solution within a real-world family farm environment, highlighting LoRaWAN network technology as an effective connectivity option for IoT-based applications in rural settings.