The objective of this study is to correlate the vocal communication of livestock with their state of welfare. Outcomes of the proposed research: An automatic system for monitoring of livestock to facilitate increased frequency of surveillance while minimizing human labour inputs, with the goal of improving animal welfare. Animal calls have partly evolved as communication signals to indicate some types of “need” and they are relatively easy to record. Hence, it seems to be reasonable to regard vocalizations as easy indicators of an animal’s state of welfare. The dependence of animal vocalizations on wellbeing makes voice recognition a potentially useful tool for judging stress levels in animals. The proposed project seeks to develop an automated noise recognition and analysis system for automatic monitoring of health and welfare of livestock.

Assoc Prof Thomas Banhazi

• Dr Les Bowtell

• Institute for Agriculture and the Environment
• National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture
• School of Engineering and Built Environment

• Animal Production

• Doctor of Philosophy (DPHD)
• Doctor of Philosophy (DPHD)
• Master of Research (MRES)