Use in pigs / cross-referencing identities

[Jamie]

Hello!

I would be interested in using idTracker to facilitate collection of behavioural data from overhead video in a project on relationships between social behaviour and infectious disease resistance in farmed piglets. I am wondering about two things:

 

1. Do you know of anyone who has tried using idTracker with group-housed pigs/piglets? I haven’t found any mention online, but perhaps there are projects in the works.
2. The piglets in the historical videos we want to analyze are not visually marked, but they have RFID ear-tags and so their identity can be verified whenever they access the automated feeder or drinker in their pen. If there is only one piglet positioned at the feeder or drinker on video when the RFID reading is taken, then we know which RFID corresponds to which idTracker id. Has anyone developed any application which would allow cross-referencing the idTracker ID to external identity verifications, such as by RFID? This sporadic identity validation by RFID might be able to help resolve uncertain ID assignments due to occlusions, by working backwards and forwards from RFID readings.

Thanks so much for any help you can provide. The software looks really impressive!

Jamie

[alfonso.per...@gmail.com]

Hi! I don't know of any previous examples with pigs. Using the RFID data to validate or correct the trajectories is certainly possible, but it would require some development. I know of a group that was considering doing something similar, but I'm not sure if they finally did it. I'll ask them, and will get back to you if they have anything they can share.