Anita Kapun

Monitoring the activity of animals can help with assessing their health status. We monitored the walking activity of fattening pigs using a UHF-RFID system. Four hundred fattening pigs with UHF-RFID ear tags were recorded by RFID antennas at the troughs, playing devices and drinkers during the fattening period. A minimum walking distance, or virtual walking distance, was determined for each pig per day by calculating the distances between two consecutive reading areas. This automatically calculated value was used as an activity measure and not only showed differences between the pigs but also between different fattening stages. The longer the fattening periods lasted, the less walking activity was detected. The virtual walking distance ranged between 281 m on average in the first fattening stage and about 141 m in the last fattening stage in a restricted environment. The findings are similar to other studies considering walking distances of fattening pigs, but are far less labor-intensive and time-consuming than direct observations.

The main objective of this paper is the monitoring of daily activity patterns of fattening pigs at different locations in the housing environment using UHF-RFID. Four hundred fattening pigs were equipped with UHF-RFID ear tags and monitored during the fattening period for about four months. The RFID antennas were installed at the feeding troughs, playing devices and drinkers. A validation phase for each of these locations was carried out prior to the first data collection. The sensitivity (true positive rate) of the UHF-RFID system was about 80% at the feeding trough and the playing device and about 60% at the drinkers. The mean of the daily visiting time of all pigs at the trough was about 55 min. The mean visiting duration at the playing device was about 38 min and at the drinkers about 9 min. The visiting times of the pigs showed a high intra- and inter-variability. It was observed that the average visit duration at the feeding trough decreases over the course of a fattening period but increases at the playing device. A documentation of visiting times of animals is possible utilizing RFID systems, allowing a higher data density than video or direct observations.