Sound analysis toward heat stress assessment in swine farming

In intensive swine farms stressful conditions that relate to climate, affect animal behaviour, welfare and production quality. This research aims to record animal vocalizations coming from a selected group of piglets, bred in standard intensive conditions, and exposed to increased temperature three times per week. This temperature increase had as a goal to stimulate heat stress specific related behaviours and vocalizations. The recorded sounds were subsequently labelled. The study of sound acoustics features such as frequency, duration and amplitude, together with the analysis of the environmental parameters increased our understanding of animal vocalisations and facilitated the development of an automatic monitoring system based on a sound analysis algorithm.