• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제62권6호
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• pp.875-883
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• 2020

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of group-housing facility (GHF), compared to an individual confinement stall (CON), on the reproductive performance, behavior, and stress hormones of gestating sows. A total of 50 primiparous sows (Landrace × Yorkshire) were randomly allocated into either CON (n = 25) or GHF (n = 25) during the gestation period. One week before parturition, the sows were transferred into conventional farrowing crates, and cross-fostering was conducted within 1 d of delivery. Blood was collected for analyses of stress indices at 75 d of gestation and postpartum. Reproductive performance was estimated during the period of birth to weaning. Behavior patterns were identified at 90 d of gestation. Litter size was not different between the CON and GHF treatments. Weaning to estrus interval, however, tended to be lower in the GHF than in the CON (p < 0.1). Activity, treating, belly nosing, and exploring behaviors were observed only in the GHF group, whereas rubbing was shown only with the CON. Serum cortisol concentration was lower in the GHF than in the CON at 75 d of gestation (p < 0.05). Sows housed in the GHF showed lower epinephrine and norepinephrine concentrations than those housed in the CON at postpartum (p < 0.05). The GHF sows demonstrated more natural behavior characteristics associated with stress relief than the CON sows with no adverse effects on reproductive performance. Therefore, these results suggest that GHF could be applied as an alternative housing facility to improve animal welfare on swine farms.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제63권2호
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• pp.367-379
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• 2021

The objectives of this study were to evaluate convolutional neural network models and computer vision techniques for the classification of swine posture with high accuracy and to use the derived result in the investigation of the effect of dietary fiber level on the behavioral characteristics of the pregnant sow under low and high ambient temperatures during the last stage of gestation. A total of 27 crossbred sows (Yorkshire × Landrace; average body weight, 192.2 ± 4.8 kg) were assigned to three treatments in a randomized complete block design during the last stage of gestation (days 90 to 114). The sows in group 1 were fed a 3% fiber diet under neutral ambient temperature; the sows in group 2 were fed a diet with 3% fiber under high ambient temperature (HT); the sows in group 3 were fed a 6% fiber diet under HT. Eight popular deep learning-based feature extraction frameworks (DenseNet121, DenseNet201, InceptionResNetV2, InceptionV3, MobileNet, VGG16, VGG19, and Xception) used for automatic swine posture classification were selected and compared using the swine posture image dataset that was constructed under real swine farm conditions. The neural network models showed excellent performance on previously unseen data (ability to generalize). The DenseNet121 feature extractor achieved the best performance with 99.83% accuracy, and both DenseNet201 and MobileNet showed an accuracy of 99.77% for the classification of the image dataset. The behavior of sows classified by the DenseNet121 feature extractor showed that the HT in our study reduced (p < 0.05) the standing behavior of sows and also has a tendency to increase (p = 0.082) lying behavior. High dietary fiber treatment tended to increase (p = 0.064) lying and decrease (p < 0.05) the standing behavior of sows, but there was no change in sitting under HT conditions.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제29권7호
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• pp.1060-1064
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• 2016

With regard to animal welfare concerns, behavioral information of weaned and mixed piglets is great interest in swine production. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the change in behavior of weaned piglets over time in two different groups (littermates and piglets from different litters) after mixing. Two weaned groups of piglets (72 individuals in all) housed either with littermates or with foreign piglets (6 individuals in $1.8m{\times}1.4m$ pens, $28^{\circ}C{\pm}1^{\circ}C$ temperature) were observed with the aid of video technology for 9 consecutive hours on days 1, 2, and 3 after mixing. The behaviors of the weaned piglets in the control and treatment groups were significantly different among the days after mixing. Piglets were, however, more active and aggressive in the groups with foreign piglets. This study reveals a lower level of agonistic behavior in groups of piglets that came from the same litter.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제30권6호
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• pp.902-906
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• 2017

Objective: This study was conducted to characterize the behaviors and the body weight of suckling piglets in different social environments. Methods: Two groups of sows and suckling piglets housed either in individual farrowing crates in separate pens ($1.8{\times}2.4m$, the control group) or in groups of three sows with their piglets in farrowing crates in a large common enclosure ($5.4{\times}2.2m$, the treatment group) were observed with the aid of video technology for 9 consecutive hours on days 1, 2, and 3, after mixing. Results: Suckling, agonistic, and elimination behaviors of suckling piglets were significantly higher in the control group than in the treatment group. Inactive behavior was higher in the treatment group than in the control group. Most of the effects of the social environment on the suckling piglets seem to be the result of large reductions in behaviors and body weight for piglets switching from high activity to low activity. Moreover, suckling behavior and birth body weight were highly correlated with body weight at the end of the test. Conclusion: The social environment that resulted from mixing, thus, had significant effects on the behavior and body weight of suckling piglets, and behavioral characteristics, therefore, should be considered when making improvements to the husbandry and care methods used in swine production.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제63권6호
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• pp.1453-1463
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• 2021

Feeding is the most important behavior that represents the health and welfare of weanling pigs. The early detection of feed refusal is crucial for the control of disease in the initial stages and the detection of empty feeders for adding feed in a timely manner. This paper proposes a real-time technique for the detection and recognition of small pigs using a deep-leaning-based method. The proposed model focuses on detecting pigs on a feeder in a feeding position. Conventional methods detect pigs and then classify them into different behavior gestures. In contrast, in the proposed method, these two tasks are combined into a single process to detect only feeding behavior to increase the speed of detection. Considering the significant differences between pig behaviors at different sizes, adaptive adjustments are introduced into a you-only-look-once (YOLO) model, including an angle optimization strategy between the head and body for detecting a head in a feeder. According to experimental results, this method can detect the feeding behavior of pigs and screen non-feeding positions with 95.66%, 94.22%, and 96.56% average precision (AP) at an intersection over union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 for YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and an additional layer and with the proposed activation function, respectively. Drinking behavior was detected with 86.86%, 89.16%, and 86.41% AP at a 0.5 IoU threshold for YOLOv3, YOLOv4, and the proposed activation function, respectively. In terms of detection and classification, the results of our study demonstrate that the proposed method yields higher precision and recall compared to conventional methods.

• 한국축산시설환경학회지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.131-138
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• 2009

본 연구는 돼지의 체온 발산에 따른 행동에 근거하여 환경을 제어할 때 몸체에서 발산되는 체열과 환경의 온도차이를 이용하여 환경을 제어할 수 있는 방법을 모색하고자 하였으며, 열환경에서 얻어진 자료를 바탕으로 축사의 환경제어 시스템에 접목하고자 실시하였다. 연구의 결과를 요약하면 다음과 같다. 1. 환경온도에 따른 돼지의 행동을 칼라영상을 통하여 획득한 후 가시화 시스템 (열화상 프로그램)을 통한 행동상태를 고온, 적온, 저온기로 분류하였다. 2. 영상처리 시스템의 하드웨어를 적외선 CCD 카메라, 영상처리 보드DIF(TH3100) 모델과 컴퓨터는 400Hz, 128M, 586 Pentium로 구성되었으며, 프로그램은 C++ 언어로 작성되었다. 3. 영상처리시스템을 온도에 따라 분류했던 결과 저온, 적온, 고온으로 분류되어 돈사내 환경제어 시스템에 응용이 가능할 것으로 판단되었다. 4. 사료섭취량은 저온구가 다른 환경온도에 비하여 사료를 많이 섭취하였던 반면에 종료체중과 일당증체량에서는 낮게 나타났다 (p<0.05).

• 한국축산시설환경학회지
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.139-148
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• 1999

This study was conducted to develop an image processing system which can classify the pig's thermoregulatory behavior under the different environmental conditions. The 4 pigs of 25kg were housed in the environmentally controlled chamber(1.4m$\times$2.2m floor space). Postural behavior of the pigs was captured with an CCD color camera. The raw behavioral images were processed by thresholoding, reduction, separation of slightly contacted pigs, labeling, noise removal, computation of number of labels, and classification of the pig's behavior. The correct classification rate of the image processing system was 97.8%(88 out of 90 testing images). The results of this study showed that the image processing system could be used for a behavior-based automatic environmental controller.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.428-434
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• 2019

동물복지의 관심고조는 전 세계적인 동향이며 최근 국내 소비자들의 복지는 반려동물에서 경제동물인 가축으로 확산되고 있다. 환경보조물은 동물복지수준 강화에 유용한 수단으로 활용되고 있으나 임신돈에서는 관련 연구는 제한적이다. 따라서, 본 연구는 환경보조물이 임신모돈의 생산성 및 행동특성에 미치는 영향을 구명하고자 실시하였다. 시험동물은 30두의 임신돈(랜드레이스)를 준비하였고, 완전임의배치법에 의거하여 3개 처리구(대조구; T1, 플라스틱 소재 놀이기구; T2, 볏짚)에 처리구당 10두씩 배치하였다. 사양시험은 임신 28-105일령동안이며 볏짚과 놀이기구는 시험돈방($11.6{\times}6.0m$) 중앙에 배치하였다. 시험 종료일에 체중 및 등지방두께를 측정하였으며 혈중 코티졸 농도를 분석하였다. 행동특성 분석을 위해 임신 91일령에 행동패턴을 24시간 촬영하였고 행동특성을 분석하였다. 시작 및 종료체중은 대조구 및 처리구간 차이를 나타내지 않았다. 등지방두께는 대조구보다 T2에서 감소하였다(C, 16.56mm vs. T2, 15.73mm; p>0.05). 총산자수, 실산자수는 처리구간 차이가 없다. 사산수는 T1 및 T2에서 대조구보다 감소하였다(1.00 and 0.63 vs. 1.50두; p>0.05). 분만폐사율은 사산수와 유사한 경향을 보였다(C, 8.68%; T1, 6.86%; T2, 3.40%). 혈중 코티졸은 대조구 및 처리구간 차이가 없다. 섭취행동은 T2에서 대조구 및 T1 처리구보다 감소하였다(1.81 vs. 9.68 and 6.99%; p<0.05). 놀이 및 파헤치기 행동은 각각 T1와 T2 처리구에서만 확인되었다(p<0.05). 반면에 사육시설에 문지르기 행동은 대조구에서만 관촬되었다(p<0.05). 이러한 결과는 환경보조물 제공이 임신돈의 생산성에 부정적인 영향을 미치지 않으면서 돼지의 행동특성은 복지향상에 도움이 될 것으로 판단된다.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• 제64권4호
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• pp.782-791
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of multiple cooling systems and different drinking water temperatures (DWT) on the performance of sows and their hair cortisol levels during heat stress. In this study, the effect of four different cooling systems: air conditioner (AC), cooling pad (CP), snout cooling (SC), and mist spray (MS), and two DWT, namely low water temperature (LWT) and high water temperature (HWT) on 48 multiparous sows (Landrace × Yorkshire; 242.84 ± 2.89 kg) was tested. The experiment is based on the use of eight replicas during a 21-days test. Different behaviors were recorded under different cooling treatments in sows. As a result, behaviors such as drinking, standing, and position change were found to be lower in sows under the AC and CP treatments than in those under the SC and MS treatments. Lying behavior increased under the AC and CP systems as compared with that under the SC and MS, systems. The average daily feed intake (ADFI) in sows and weight at weaning in piglets was higher under the AC, CP, and LWT treatments than under the SC, MS and HWT treatments. Sows subjected to SC and MS treatment showed higher hair cortisol levels, rectal temperature, and respiratory rate during lactation than those under AC and CP treatments. Hair cortisol levels, rectal temperature, and respiratory rate were also higher under the HWT than under the LWT treatment. As per the results of this study, the LWT has no significant effect on any of the behavioral factors. Taken together, the use of AC and CP cooling treatment is highly recommended to improve the behavior and to reduce the stress levels in lactating sows.

• 한국환경보건학회지
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• 제40권5호
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• pp.413-424
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• 2014

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to seek measures for improvement and management of farm work safety and health by conducting questionnaire surveys and on-site investigations to ascertain the present state of occurrence of safety accidents and safety and health management levels among swine farmers. In particular, the purpose of this study is to provide basic data for the establishment of measures for the management of safety and health suitable to the characteristics of related working environments. Methods: Questionnaire surveys were conducted among 223 farmers engaged in swine farming in 14 regions, and 10 farms were visited in order to implement multilateral methods, including in-depth interviews, along with field surveys. Results: The surveys indicated that 26.2% of all respondents experienced farm-work related safety accidents and body-reaction related accidents showed a high ratio at 31.1% of all respondents. With regard to cause materials of safety accidents, work other than that directly related to swine raising showed high ratios of safety accidents, with pigsty facility related accidents at 26.6%. Although most workers recognized the dangers latent in the working environments, their behavior and responses to the prevention of safety accidents were still insufficient due to a lack of understanding of safety and health management. In the survey on the present state of personal hygiene and wearing of protective equipment, workers were found to have been exposed to dangerous and harmful environments both inside and outside pigsties, but the actual states of their wearing protective safety equipment were very poor. Conclusion: Given the results of this study, swine farmers well recognize problems in their control of safety accidents and management of safety and health, but their knowledge about safety and health education and management guidelines was insufficient. Therefore, safety and health education, public relations, and customized personal protective equipment suitable for swine raising work should be developed in order to address the foregoing problem.