A real-time automated system for monitoring individual feed intake and body weight of group housed turkeys
Feed conversion is an important production trait in turkey breeding; the measurement of an individual bird's feed efficiency is important in identifying the most genetically superior individual. The development of a real-time automated feed intake and body weight monitoring system is described in this paper. The system integrated multiple feed and body weight weighing stations consisting of electronic scales, radio frequency identification (RFID) devices and data communication modules. A distributed and client-server-based system architecture with multi-threading software design was developed. This system architecture allowed for a real-time data acquisition capability when a large number of stations were required. A structured query language (SQL) database management system was developed to record and manage the dynamic feed intake and body weight gain data of individual birds. The developed system also offers a powerful research tool for studying poultry feeding behavior under group housing conditions.
breeding rfid database management system feeding behavior turkey monitoring system feed conversion ratio fcr