Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Animal Sciences Unit, Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Scheldeweg 68, 9090 Melle, Belgium.
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Nutrition, Genetics and Ethology, Ghent University, Heidestraat 19, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium.
Sensors (Basel). 2019 Mar 26;19(6):1473. doi: 10.3390/s19061473.
Claw lesions and lameness in sows are important problems in the industry as they impair sow welfare and result in economic losses. Available scoring techniques to detect claw lesions are all limited in terms of collecting data during all reproductive phases and recording all claws. The Mobile Claw Scoring Device (MCSD) was designed to address these limitations. After considering different practical situations and a design phase, two prototypes were constructed and tested. Improvements were incorporated into a final aluminium apparatus, consisting of two cameras with light-emitting diode (LED) lights mounted in a two-segment aluminium box and covered with laminated tempered glass plates. The operating system slides underneath the claws and takes video images. This final prototype was optimised and validated in an experiment with 20 hybrid sows, comparing scores for soiled claws using the MCSD against scores for clean claws using the Feet First sow chute (as gold standard). Fifty percent of the scores differed between both scoring tools, with mainly medial claw digits deviating, but this seemed biologically irrelevant. The MCSD seems to be an appropriate alternative for on-farm claw scoring and is distinguishable from other claw scoring techniques; however, it needs further optimisation to improve the similarity between the two techniques.
猪蹄损伤和跛行是养猪业中的重要问题，因为它们会损害母猪福利并导致经济损失。现有的蹄病评分技术在收集所有繁殖阶段的数据和记录所有蹄子时都存在局限性。移动蹄病评分设备（MCSD）旨在解决这些限制。在考虑了不同的实际情况和设计阶段后，构建并测试了两个原型。改进后的最终设备由两个带有发光二极管（LED）灯的摄像头组成，安装在两段式铝制盒子中，并覆盖有层压 tempered 玻璃。操作系统在蹄子下方滑动并拍摄视频图像。这个最终原型在一个包含 20 头杂交母猪的实验中进行了优化和验证，使用 MCSD 对脏蹄进行评分，并与使用 Feet First 母猪通道（作为金标准）对干净蹄进行评分进行了比较。这两种评分工具的评分有 50%的差异，主要是内侧蹄趾的差异，但这似乎在生物学上无关紧要。MCSD 似乎是一种适合农场使用的蹄病评分替代方法，与其他蹄病评分技术有所区别；然而，它需要进一步优化，以提高两种技术之间的相似性。
