Salau Jennifer, Hildebrandt Frederik, Czycholl Irena, Krieter Joachim
Institute of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, 24098 Kiel, Germany.
Animals (Basel). 2020 Oct 21;10(10):1932. doi: 10.3390/ani10101932.
Sensors delivering information on the position of farm animals have been widely used in precision livestock farming. Global Positioning System (GPS) sensors are already known from applications in military, private and commercial environments, and their application in animal science is increasing. However, as trade-offs between sensor cost, battery life and sensor weight have to be made, GPS based studies scheduling long data collection periods and including a high number of animals, have to deal with problems like high hardware costs and data disruption during recharging of sensors. Furthermore, human-animal interaction due to sensor changing at the end of battery life interferes with the animal behaviour under analysis. The present study thus proposes a setting to deal with these challenges and offers the software tool "HerdGPS-Preprocessor", because collecting position data from multiple animals nonstop for several weeks produces a high amount of raw data which needs to be sorted, preprocessed and provided in a suitable format per animal and day. The software tool "HerdGPS-Preprocessor" additionally outputs contact lists to enable a straight analysis of animal contacts. The software tool was exemplarily deployed for one month of daily and continuous GPS data of 40 horses in a loose-housing boarding facility in northern Germany. Contact lists were used to generate separate networks for every hour, which are then analysed with regard to the network parameter density, diameter and clique structure. Differences depending on the day and the day time could be observed. More dense networks with more and larger cliques were determined in the hours prior to the opening of additional pasture.
提供家畜位置信息的传感器已在精准畜牧业中广泛应用。全球定位系统（GPS）传感器在军事、私人和商业环境中的应用已为人所知，其在动物科学领域的应用也在不断增加。然而，由于必须在传感器成本、电池寿命和传感器重量之间进行权衡，基于GPS的研究若安排较长的数据收集期并涉及大量动物，就不得不应对诸如硬件成本高以及传感器充电期间数据中断等问题。此外，在电池寿命结束时更换传感器所导致的人与动物的互动会干扰正在分析的动物行为。因此，本研究提出了一种应对这些挑战的设置，并提供了软件工具“HerdGPS - 预处理器”，因为连续数周不间断地从多只动物收集位置数据会产生大量原始数据，这些数据需要进行分类、预处理并以适合每只动物和每天的格式提供。软件工具“HerdGPS - 预处理器”还会输出联系人列表，以便直接分析动物之间的接触情况。该软件工具被示例性地应用于德国北部一个散养寄宿设施中40匹马的为期一个月的每日连续GPS数据。联系人列表用于每小时生成单独的网络，然后针对网络参数密度、直径和团结构进行分析。可以观察到取决于日期和白天时间的差异。在额外牧场开放前的几个小时内确定了具有更多更大团的更密集网络。
