Camera-based technology funded through the SMART Broiler program tracks and estimates chicken weights without manual weighing, helping to optimize flock weight measurements and improve flock health and welfare.
“Live weight is an important key performance metric in broiler production systems and the approach described in this paper is a significant step towards the implementation of a fully automated, camera-based weighing system for commercial broiler farming,” Niamh O’Connell, professor, Queen’s University, Belfast and her co-authors wrote in a March 2025 study published in the journal, Smart Agricultural Technology.
Based on existing human crowd surveillance algorithms, FlockFocus uses overhead cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate the weight of broiler chickens without manual weighing. Manual weighing is labor intensive and can increase stress in the birds, impacting health and welfare.
“Accurate, timely and representative information on bird body weight is an important tool for broiler chicken farmers and the broader industry. This publication marks an important step towards a new and feasible way to achieve this,” said O’Connell.
Moy Park is a partner on this technology.
SMART Broiler advances welfare technology
O’Connell was awarded funding to develop the camera-based system from the SMART Broiler program, a research initiative designed to aid the development of automated monitoring tools to assess broiler welfare from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and McDonald’s.
The FFAR’s Smart Broiler program, launched in 2019, originally funded nine research teams in phase one to develop sensor-based systems that can automatically monitor key welfare indicators in commercial broiler barns including gait scores, leg health and natural behaviors.