Sound Analysis toward heat stress assessment in swine farming

Heat stress is widely recognized as a stressful condition that affects most livestock populations among several latitudes and in Europe especially during the summer months where high intensity hot weather patterns are referred to as heat waves. In intensive swine farms this stressful condition affect animal behaviour, welfare and production quality. Generally pigs respond to high ambient temperature by nutritional and physiological adaptation to maintain homoeostasis: a decrease of the average daily feed intake to limit heat production and an increase of respiratory rate to remove excess heat. Beside, behavioural reactions to distress exist including animal vocalizations. This research will observe and record several animal vocalizations from piglets bred in standard intensive conditions coupling them with environmental and physiological parameters. Animal vocalizations were recorded in group of seven weaned piglets, bred in standard intensive conditions, exposed to increased temperature.Understanding negative animal responses and observing and recognizing animals in distress is a key skill to implement appropriate practices in order to reduce the stress effects. A possibility toward this goal is applying sound analysis, in livestock farming compartments, as a tool for early detection of disease and distress from continuous recording and automatic processing of animal sounds. Vocalisation must be considered as good indicator to assess heat stress as well as physiologic parameters, climate or feed intake are widely. Nowadays intensive sustainable livestock farming require advanced planning of production management systems which may adapt dynamically to the animals conditions.