Feasibility study for the use of surface-temperature discriminant poultry health

Abstract. The body temperature that can be used to determine the health of an animal is an important physiological feature of the animal. As the scale of modern poultry farming continues to expand, the use of traditional thermometer temperature measurement methods to determine its health status is no longer applicable. The rapid development of thermal infrared imaging makes it possible to quickly measure the temperature, but whether the measured surface temperature can characterize the health of the poultry is uncertain. In order to determine the health status of laying hens through body temperature, the surface temperature and true body temperature of healthy laying hens were measured at different ambient temperatures. A method for extracting surface temperature of non - feather area based on temperature threshold is proposed. On this basis, the prediction model of body surface temperature was obtained by regression analysis. By comparing the measured temperature of the pathological individual with the predicted temperature, the discriminant threshold of the pathological individual was obtained. Fifty healthy chickens with healthy and pathologic pathology were selected to determine their health status by using the above method. The correct rate was 85.66%. The results show that the health status of poultry can be judged by applying the thermal imager to measure the surface temperature.