A valuable strategy for chicken welfare management: A review for chicken live weight monitoring

Live-weight is a widely accepted proxy for the growing status of chickens at a point in time. In current cultivation status, it is uncommon for producers to monitor chicken live-weight regularly and precisely. In this paper, we discuss the usefulness of chicken live-weight, and review the evolution in chicken live-weight measuring from classical methods to multi-technology integration, namely weighing platform method, morphometry method, machine vision method, and walk-over weighing method. This article reports advantages and problems on chicken weighing methods from traditional to modern, with a strong focus on multi-technology weighing system. Owing to its flexibility, intelligence, and high efficiency, multi-technology integration mapped into live-stock weighing systems have emerged as a promising trend. A discussion of current challenges involved in the chicken live-weight measuring systems appears in the conclusions, which may drive future research directions. Muti-technology based live-weight measuring systems for chickens include sensors, machine vision, image process, wireless systems, internet of things, and a series of technology. It provides some new solutions to the present problems of poultry welfare breeding in terms of simultaneous collection of individual weight and flock average weight, multiple growth data fusion, processing time, and overall system operability. This article discusses the usefulness of chicken live-weight, and reviews the evolution in chicken live-weight measuring from classical methods to multi-technology integration.