Hen housing subject of MSU research

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In an attempt to foster better cage-free living environments for chickens, MSU researchers are working on a project to monitor birds’ movements.

“When you’re talking about animal welfare, it’s about quality of life for the animals,” said Janice Siegford, an assistant professor of animal science and principle investigator of the project at MSU.

To monitor the chickens, the team developed two kinds of sensors. Placed on a harness on the back of the chicken, a small node sends signals to other sensors placed in the hen’s environment. The sensors are placed at four locations the researchers believe the bird spends a lot of time.

The system works off transmissions sent back and forth between the two signals, said Muhannad Quwaider, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student and member of the research team.

“Based on the signal strength measurement, we can estimate the proximity of the bird in respect to that station,” Quwaider said.

Courtney Daigle, an animal science doctoral student and member of the research team, joined the team while the technology still was being developed.

“The long-term goal is to be able to use this in a cage-free production system to be able to monitor health, measure welfare, behavior and movement of the birds in these large facilities,” Daigle said.

For nine months, the team has been syncing the sensors on the chickens with receiving monitors used to track the hens. This ensures that when the monitor says the bird is perching that the bird actually is perching.

Now that part of the project is near completion, the team hopes to continue monitoring the chickens on a larger scale, Siegford said.

“The next part is determining what the bird is actually doing, being able to tell if the bird is doing certain things based on the movements from the monitor,” Siegford said.

The team has been following six key behaviors displayed by the chickens: standing, sitting, walking, dust bathing, drinking and feeding. The software hopefully will be able to tell the researchers exactly what the chicken is doing based on its movement recorded by the small node, Siegford said.

“We’re trying to come up with a way that … you don’t have to treat them all as a flock (and) you can still focus on them on the individual level,” Siegford said. “It’s most useful in a cage-free environment.”

The project is funded by two grants. The first grant, issued by the MSU Animal Agriculture Initiative for $50,000, was received by the team on July 1. The second grant came from the United States Department of Agriculture. The team received the $375,000 grant in the fall.

The MSU team is the only group conducting this type of research in the U.S., and possibly in the world, Siegford said.

According to legislature.mi.gov, a Michigan law passed Oct. 12, 2009, states that all egg-laying hens and gestating sows must be able to lie down, stand up and fully extend limbs in their environment. Although requirements of the law do not need to be met for 10 years, Siegford said she and her team are working to provide a perfect cage-free environment.

“We don’t want to use this technology to make judgements on producers,” Siegford said. “What we want to do is create a way for (producers) to learn about how to optimize their housing systems.”

Siegford said that the cage-free housing systems the team is developing will first be used by producers. The monitors and sensors, which are being used now for development of the housing systems, will be available to producers at a later date.

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