Monitoring pig growth using a prototype imaging system

Knowledge of the daily growth rate of pigs would enable the stockman to monitor their performance and health, and to predict and control their market weight and date. This paper describes and evaluates the performance of an automatic image collection and analysis system designed to record the weight-related areas of pigs under production conditions. The system successfully logged the growth rates of three groups of pigs of three genetic strains to within 5%, and identified significant differences in the measured area to weight relationships for the three strains, such that linear regression coefficients could be fitted, with the same slope but different intercepts for seperate breeds. (C) 1999 Silsoe Research Institute.