RED DEER – Scanning an animal’s eye with infrared technology shows promise in early disease detection.
The system detects heat spots and has been in development for more than 10 years, said Al Schaefer of Agriculture Canada.
“We see the animal in its suffering state and try to retrospectively work out when did that start and is there anything we can do to try and remedy that,” he said at the Alberta Farm Animal Care Association annual meeting in Red Deer March 26.
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Such early warnings could prevent suffering, reduce treatment costs and slow disease spread.
“It has always been our position, if you improve animal welfare, you improve economics of rearing those animals as well,” he said.
Cattle may suffer stress from travelling long distances to the feedlot from the farm.
Shipping fever, or bovine respiratory disease, can kill more than half of those affected, with the survivors not growing properly or grading well.
The Grow Safe feeding system uses scanners to read electronic ear tags and record how often an individual visits the trough and how much it eats. Add the infrared camera to the station and thermal shifts are noted in the eye. The sick ones can be pulled from the pen and treated before symptoms appear.
The system is being tested at a commercial feedlot, said Schaefer.
Cameras mounted in a hog barn perform a similar duty where changes in body temperature in pigs can be picked up sooner, said Nigel Cook of Alberta Agriculture. Research has shown the cameras are so sensitive that changes in hot spots are noted.
“The temperature can change by a degree depending where the pigs cluster,” he said.
Adjustments have been made to only report temperature increases over a certain level.
In a hog barn, the system is more likely to notice an outbreak within the group rather than an individual, but that information is important to prevent and treat disease.
Cook also promotes this tool for disease surveillance because it picks up any aberrations before symptoms appear.
