I want to register the spatial distribution of indoor (intensive) housed poultry (by some tracer chickens). Who has experience with a specific lightweight navigation device for poultry? What about the duration of the data storage or other problems? Who has some suggestions?
Hello Bert! first, how many chickens will you monitor? and do you want to do it with cameras, is it an ethology work?
Hi, we tagged them in an experiment with rings and wing tags. The birds pecked them of. If birds see something which is different thy go for it. Especially laying hens. What we did was to putsome brown lyers into a white layer group. That workes very well.
Hi, Thank you for the suggestions.
@ Sheila: I had the intention to follow 10 or 20 chickens (24 h / 24 h) in a group of 3,000 chickens. Yes, we have cameras, but we can't track them individually. So, I thought to use a kind of a indoor navigation system.
Indeed, using colours is a good suggestion, but is there an behaviour impact of using colours (pecking?)?
If you use birds of different colour and these were reared together, there shouldn´t be a impact. We have quite a few different coloured herds and it works very well. But your apprehension is right, there could be a behavioural impactlikepecking/cannibalism.
I don't have experience of such research but I know that the wild life experts navigate the movement of Falcons through continents.So to observe 10-20 chickens under the indoor navigation system. A chip as a Wing band /Tag of 10-20 chickens can work very well, if you consult an IT expert during the installation of indoor navigation system.
Bert, we are planning to use automated video tracking for this purpose, in collaboration with scientists of Wageningen University. I hope to have a solid answer for you soon. Feel free to contact me directly to exchange technical ideas.
Dear Bert, attached you can fin our paper about assessment of a GPS application
to evaluate activities of organic chickens. We tried it also indoor, but not with the same results.
Best regards
Alessandro
Dea Allessandro, thanks for your paper on GPS tracking of chicken. Very interesting! You say that you got different results indoor. What sort of results did you get? I would guess that GPS tracking does not work at all indoor. We currently use either ultrawideband tracking or video tracking for indoor studies with farm animals.
Dear Alessandro,
Thank you for the interesting article, I read it. I've got three questions about your article.
1) Where on the body of the chicken did you attached the GPS by a Velcro belt? Was that on the back between the wings?
2) Did you noticed any pecking on the GPS devices?
3) You registered also the time, the speed and the distance indoor?
Bert
Hi Lucas,
Thank you for the information and suggestions. What are your remarks about the ultra wide devices for indoor use? Can I use it for individual monitoring of the location of indoor housed poultry?
Dear Colleagues, in huts with very light roofsa bit of signal was noted, but not sufficient to definre a track.
1) see picture attached
2) no
3) no
Dear Alessandro, thanks for the information and pictures of chicken with GPS receivers. Very informative. I am happy to read that the devices were not damaged by pecking birds.
Allessandro,
Perhaps the absence of pecking is related to the low outdoor density of the poultry, not?
Bert
Dear Bert, the ultrawideband technology that we use consists of "active RFID" transponders (approx. 3 x 3 x 1 cm) attached to the animal. These transmitters communicate with sensors attached to the wall at user-defined intervals (e.g. 1 Hz or 10 Hz). With 4 sensors we cover an area of max. 40 x 40 meters. Positional accuracy is between 15 and 30 cm. Thus we generate a real-time track for each animal carrying a tag. In the end we feed all tracks in a program called TrackLab that we developed for this purpose, for analysis of distance moved, speed, path shape, time budgets, etc.
Dear Lucas, could you please provide more information about this active RFID system? I looked at the webpage of your company and could only find the software you've mentioned. Best, Ran Nathan ([email protected])
Dear Ran, take a look at http://www.noldus.com/innovationworks/products/tracklab/ubisense. The tags are made by a company called Ubisense. They are mostly active in industrial applications, we have adapted the system for animal tracking. What exactly would you like to know about this technology?
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