![]() To complement manual surveillance, an automated behavioral assessment tool can be built that operates on a set of indicators to provide continuous surveillance, recognize stressful management practices, and detect early signs of sickness in individual pigs to promptly take corrective measures for the betterment of the animal and the entire population. Without timely detection and intervention, the health of the pigs in a herd can be compromised, resulting in additional costs of medications, diagnostics, and therapy. Moreover, it is difficult to give proper attention to all the animals and to identify subtle traits indicative of poor well-being in a timely manner. ![]() Manual surveillance may miss out to detect early signs of sickness (e.g., fever), particularly at night when the disease symptoms can be elevated. However, human observations are subjective, as it is difficult to delineate the factors associated with the pig’s mental and physical state (e.g., in stress or pain). Farm animal caretakers can know the extent of their pigs’ well-being with respect to their mental state (i.e., being calm, satisfied, relaxed, curious, playful, scared, stressed, or grunting) and physical state (i.e., healthy, medicated, or injured). Today, manual surveillance is generally conducted few times during the day in pig farms to visually screen for apparent signs of illness in their pigs, such as lethargy, lameness, and coughing. Reduced well-being may negatively influence the pig’s health, growth, behavior, and emotional state. In general, poor well-being is manifested by behavioral changes (e.g., abnormal movement, reduced feeding or drinking, lethargy, or aggressive nature), physiological changes (e.g., increased heart rate or respiration rate), and pathological changes (e.g., lesions, stress-related biomarkers, and other clinical signs). Good well-being is reached when the animal is in harmony with itself and its environment, whereas poor well-being happens when the animal is exposed to infections and adverse conditions resulting from different management practices. This requires frequent assessment of their well-being status and disease symptoms. Therefore, all stakeholders in the pig industry want to ensure that pigs display normal behavior and physiological functioning with the absence of lesions, diseases, or malnutrition. The economics of a pig farm is dependent on the health and welfare status of pigs.
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