Automatic Recognition and Quantification Feeding Behaviors of Nursery Pigs Using Improved YOLOV5 and Feeding Functional Area Proposals

Simple Summary In commercial-intensive pig farms, the identification and quantification of piglet feeding behavior is an important indicator for daily inspections. However, the model often judges pigs resting in the feeding area as the feeding behavior. Considering the functional characteristics of the pig house feeding area, we present a novel method based on the improved YOLOV5 and feeding functional area suggestions to identify the feeding and non-feeding behaviors of nursery piglets. In addition, four advanced models and ablation experiments are adopted for a comparative evaluation of the robustness of the model. This article proposes a model that can help the management team adjust piglet feeding patterns and save more manpower and feed.Abstract A novel method is proposed based on the improved YOLOV5 and feeding functional area proposals to identify the feeding behaviors of nursery piglets in a complex light and different posture environment. The method consists of three steps: first, the corner coordinates of the feeding functional area were set up by using the shape characteristics of the trough proposals and the ratio of the corner point to the image width and height to separate the irregular feeding area; second, a transformer module model was introduced based on YOLOV5 for highly accurate head detection; and third, the feeding behavior was recognized and counted by calculating the proportion of the head in the located feeding area. The pig head dataset was constructed, including 5040 training sets with 54,670 piglet head boxes, and 1200 test sets, and 25,330 piglet head boxes. The improved model achieves a 5.8% increase in the mAP and a 4.7% increase in the F1 score compared with the YOLOV5s model. The model is also applied to analyze the feeding pattern of group-housed nursery pigs in 24 h continuous monitoring and finds that nursing pigs have different feeding rhythms for the day and night, with peak feeding periods at 7:00-9:00 and 15:00-17:00 and decreased feeding periods at 12:00-14:00 and 0:00-6:00. The model provides a solution for identifying and quantifying pig feeding behaviors and offers a data basis for adjusting the farm feeding scheme.