Value Creation through Precision Livestock Farming Systems

Daniel Berckmans
M3-BIORES Measure, Model & Manage Bio Responses, KU Leuven
Catholic University Leuven, Belgium
Corresponding author: Daniel.berckmans@biw.kuleuven.be

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) is the fully automated continuous monitoring of

(individual) animals by using modern information and communications technology (sensors,
cameras, microphones, etc.) as part of the management system. PLF assists livestock producers
through automated, continuous monitoring and improvement of the status of the animals. A
number of PLF tools have been developed at laboratory levels as prototypes and as commercial
products that are now available for farmers. The overall objective of a running EU-PLF project
is to support farmers using PLF solutions in commercial farms and to experience/analyse how
these products can improve value for the farmers in practice. The objective of this paper is to
share some results of this project. Twenty farms (5 broiler, 10 fattening pig, and 5 milking cow
farms) spread over Europe have been selected and PLF equipment has been installed. In these
farms, sensor data, images and sound data are stored and PLF algorithms run on these data.
During farm visits manual scores are rated by using the Welfare Quality Protocols to score these
farms on animal welfare. The PLF systems calculated PLF scores based upon fully automated
continuous monitoring. It is analysed whether the PLF scores do correspond to the Welfare
Quality scores that were rated in parallel. Farmers have been using the technology while visits
and meetings have been organised to understand their response to the use of these systems on
the commercial farms. Results of these events are reported and discussed.
The European Union (EU) has invested large sums of money in the Welfare Quality
project, which aimed to develop a methodology to score animal welfare on farms
(www.welfarequality.net). The EU seeks to implement this in practice (EFSA, 2012) by means
of new directives. However implementing more directives onto the farmers will increase again
the cost for livestock farming. The European farmers are already subject to many regulations
and laws and related cost must be gained from better productivity. The cost/benefit of a yearly
visit to score animal welfare must be questioned when it comes to getting this paid by someone.
When farmers have to manage more animals in the same available working time they need to
have high productivity to cover their costs. Consequently farmers get more problems to make
their living out of their livestock business.
Since 20 years now that the technology of monitoring animals with information technology
is under development in laboratory conditions (Van der Stuyft et al., 1991). The European
Committee for Precision Livestock Farming has just organised the 7th ECPLF2015 conference.
Over 1,000 scientific papers have been published in the proceedings of the 7 European
Conferences on Precision Livestock Farming since 2003. Most of that research was done in
laboratories or in farms under laboratory conditions. Instead of developing more technology it is
now time to bring this Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) approach into real farms and start
testing and implementing in commercial farms.
The European Commission has started the European EU-PLF project on value creation
through Precision Livestock Farming. This project allowed to install PLF technology in 20
farms spread all over Europe to make farmers using and experiencing the technology.
The objective of this paper is to share experiences from several discussions in the past years
and from this European project with PLF technology in commercial pig and broiler farms. For
farms of fattening pigs and broilers this is the first time that PLF technology is tested in
commercial farms over Europe. The focus is discussing some very important issues and
questions rather than more technical results.
1

1. Materials and Methods

Precision livestock farming has the objective to create a management system based on
continuous automatic real-time monitoring and control of production/reproduction, animal
health and welfare, and the environmental impact of livestock production. Precision livestock
farming is based on the assumption that continuous direct monitoring or observation of animals
will enable farmers to detect and control the health and welfare status of their animals at any
given time.
Technological development and progress have advanced to such an extent that accurate,
powerful and affordable tools are now available to implement this technology in commercial
farms. The available technology includes cameras, microphones, sensors (such as 3D
accelerometers [including gyroscopes], temperature sensors, skin conductivity sensors and
glucose sensors), wireless communication tools, Internet connections and cloud storage. Modern
technology makes it possible to place cameras, microphones and sensors sufficiently close that
they can replace the farmers eyes and ears in monitoring individual animals.
The aim of PLF is to combine all the available hardware with intelligent software in order to
extract information from a wide range of data. Precision livestock farming can offer a
management tool that enables a farmer to monitor animals automatically and to create added
value by helping to secure improved health, welfare, yields and environmental impact.
2. Results and Discussion
It is shown that the number of coughs resulting from the PLF technology by Soundtalks are
in good agreement with the number of coughs counted by the human assessor (Berckmans et al.,
2015). Moreover these authors show that the PLF technology is faster in detecting respiratory
problems than the farmer which is normal since the sound technology is monitoring 20,000
samples continuously, analysing and giving early warnings continuously. The PLF technology
can detect problems up to 10 days before the farmer has noticed them while some problems
were never noticed by the farmer.
It is shown that the output of real time image analysis on pigs correlates well with the human
observations of behavioural activities (Ott et al., 2014). The results from the real time image
analysis show that the eYenamic system can detect 95.3 % of all problems that were
experienced and noted by the farmer (Kashiha et al., 2014).
3. Conclusions
The running EU PLF project will deliver a Blueprint for stakeholders, with a focus on
farmers, on how to implement the PLF systems in farms and which problems can be expected.
This PLF-Blueprint is like a manual for farmers and companies who want to bring this
technology to the farm. The format will be an e-course on a website that is free available for
everybody. Moreover the e-course will has a second level for researchers and other stakeholders
interested in the PLF technology.
PLF and livestock sectors is a matter that deserves the interest of many more stakeholders
than only farmers. Farmers organisations, veterinarians, technology providers, feeder companies,
breeding companies, slaughter houses, retailers, consumers, the general public, regional and
national governments, politicians, the press, schools from first to highest degree and last but not
least researchers should contribute to the debate on how the livestock sector should evolve.

Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledge all his partners in the project and the European
Community for financial participation in Collaborative Project EU-PLF KBBE.2012.1.1-02311825 under the Seventh Framework Programme.
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