Acoustic Description of Bird Broiler Vocalisations in a Real-Life Intensive Farm and Its Impact on Animal Welfare: A Comparative Analysis from several Recording Campaigns

The poultry meat industry is one of the most efficient biological systems to transform cereal protein into high quality protein for human consumption at a low cost. However, intensive production generates stress to animals, which can be major sources of welfare problems. In this study, broiler bird welfare is measured by some indicators: CO2, temperature, humidity, weight, deaths, food and water intake. Additionally, we approach the acoustic analysis of the bird's vocalisations as a possible metric to add to the aforementioned parameters. For this purpose, an acoustic recording and analysis of an entire production cycle of an intensive broiler Ross 308 poultry farm in the Mediterranean area has been performed, and that data has been analysed. The following step to consolidate the analysis is to stablish a clear comparison among the performance of the indicators (Leq, PF, PF variation, death, CO2, weight, etc) in the conditions of three different recording campaigns corresponding to three different entire production cycles. The promising dependencies about peak frequency and L_eq variability among the other parameters measured in the farm previously studied should be validated in an inter-campaign comparison, which may also arise the possibility of changes due to the season of the year.