Computer Systems Tell When Chickens Attack

Poultry farming has always been one of the major businesses of the world. Brands like KFC, venky’s are the examples. Egg business is huge too! While these businesses were affected largely because of the recent “H1N1 Swine Flu” scare (and we had no choice but to kill ’em all!). There is one more phenomena the poultry industry is always worried about- The hens attacking each other!

The Laying Hens are not usually antisocial. But, under the stress of incarceration, they are known to peck one another which sometimes proves fatal. Its like a chain reaction. It generally starts with a couple of chickens and spreads quickly. When one hen attacks another, rest of the hens follow suit.

One option is clipping the chickens’ beaks. But this is not allowed in many countries on humanitarian grounds. Environmental changes like dimming the lights, improving foraging material may help prevent attacks. But for that, the farmer needs to know which hens need changes. Also every adjustment has its cost!

Stephen Roberts, a robotics engineer who is doing research on pattern-recognition technology, feels that he has got the answer! Previously, He studied human crowd movement using a machine-vision system based on optical flow. Optical system is the measure of pixel-to-pixel changes between continuous frames of a video. The principle is same for humans and chickens. Each image is little different from the previous one, with chickens moving with respect to one another. Each kind of crowd has its signature flow pattern.

He started by watching how an individual chicken walks! Some farmers hire professionals, who just by observing detect the chickens who may turn rogue! But these professionals can’t keep a watch for all the time. All Roberts had to do was to mimic these professionals using a computer system!

He turned to hidden Markov chains, a mathematical model which uses noise in data set to estimate the normal signal and then identifies the signal going away from normal. The team found most of the disturbances in the flocks that had the most feather damage. The zoologists were astonished to see these results (which were quite correct) being forecast by a computer system!

The basic reason for such behavior of hens is that they are kept in very small cages so as to accommodate most of them in less space. Also, as they get the food with very little effort, their age old instinct of pecking the ground in search of food doesn’t have an outlet. So, they are likely to peck each other instead! Now the real challenge for the computerized detectors is to detect abnormal behavior in due time.  The detector should provide an early warning so as to avoid the massacre! Stephen’s team is planning to expand their research and aim to share these future detectors with the farmers and animal welfare agencies for real time. This computer system, in no way, can replace the observant farmers, but it may make their job simpler and give an early warning!

This type of engineering saddens me though. Hens are actually animals and not just the egg-laying machines. Instead of finding a solution that prevents the poor hens from essentially going crazy, we are inventing systems to identify rouge hens and eliminate them so that the rest of the poor flock can continue to exist in miserable confinement. Free-ranging chickens rarely exhibit this behavior. I am not an animal activist, but if this is what engineering is leading us to, God help us!

As a funny element, I think we should look on the bright side: if this research is successful, perhaps we can use it to get rid of "rogue children" before they turn into criminals.