Acknowledgements Book of abstracts - Publicaties - Vlaanderen.be

Ingrid de Jong presents Oral paper 4
In session 1: Development, validation and automated measurements of indicators of animal welfare
Thursday, 11 September 2008 from 11h45-12h00 in the Aula chaired by Isabelle Veissier
32
Oral paper 4
AUTOMATED MEASUREMENT OF FOOT PAD LESIONS IN BROILER
CHICKENS
I.C. de Jong 1 , M. Gerritzen 1 , H. Reimert 1 , E. Fritsma 2 , C. Pieterse 2
1 Animal Production Division, Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, Lelystad, The Netherlands
2 Meyn Food Processing Technology BV PO Box 16, 1510 AA Oostzaan, The Netherlands
It is likely that foot pad lesions will be included as welfare parameter in the European Council
Directive for the protection of broilers in the near future. Thus far, foot pad lesions are measured at
the slaughter plant by trained veterinarians.
Video imaging is an existing technique to monitor aspects of carcass classification at the slaughter
plant, like bruises and breast blisters. This technique has not been applied for automatic monitoring
of foot pad lesions in broilers yet. The objective of the current project was to develop a prototype of
an automated system to measure foot pad lesions in broilers at the slaughter plant, using the existing
video imaging technique.
It turned out that the existing video imaging system was not suitable for measuring foot pad lesions.
Therefore, a new camera system was developed. The best position of the system was after removal
of feet, just before the feet are automatically de-shackled. A prototype was installed in-line and
images were made from 51 flocks. From each flock, 100 feet were selected and scored by a trained
researcher according to the Swedish scoring method.
From these 51 flocks the prototype system photographed 95.8% of the foot pads. The percentage of
agreement with our scoring was 85.6% for score 0 (intact foot pads), 16.7% for score 1 (moderate
lesions) and 77.8% for score 2 (severe lesions).
The prototype of the system is successful with respect to the percentage of foot pads that can be
photographed and scored. Missing images were caused by empty shackles, a wrong position in the
shackle or feathers on the foot pads. However, the software is still being improved, as especially it
fails in scoring foot pads with moderate lesions. This project showed that it is possible to use video
imaging for automatic scoring of foot pad lesions at the slaughter plant.
Contact information: Ingrid de Jong or email ingrid.dejong@wur.nl
Complete address: Animal Sciences Group of Wageningen UR PO Box 65 8200 AB Lelystad The
Netherlands
Species: Broiler