AI trial listens for early welfare warnings in laying hens

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being tested on UK laying hen farms to pick up early signs of welfare problems before they become more serious.

Noble Foods has launched a two-year project to test whether acoustic monitoring can help farmers spot changes in flock behaviour, health or environmental conditions sooner.

The Innovate UK-funded trial is being carried out with agri-tech businesses AgriSound and Aviasenze.

Technology is being tested on a commercial free-range farm in East Yorkshire as well as at one of Noble Foods’ barn laying facilities.

Testing the system across both housing types is intended to show whether acoustic monitoring can provide useful welfare information in different commercial environments.

The system analyses sounds inside poultry houses and uses machine learning to identify patterns in hen vocalisations and activity.

Researchers will examine whether changes in those patterns could indicate shifts in behaviour, health or environmental conditions before problems escalate.

The partners say the project is still at the trial stage and is designed to establish whether the technology can provide reliable, useful information under normal farm conditions.

Free-range farmer Will Waind, who is hosting part of the trial, said the potential value lies in providing farmers with another way to detect subtle changes in a flock.

“As a farmer, your job is to spot small changes before they become big problems, but you can’t be everywhere at once. What appealed to me about this project is the idea of having another set of ‘ears’ in the shed, picking up on things that might otherwise be missed.”

He said any new technology would also need to prove practical in a commercial setting.

“We’ve all been through a tough few years in egg production, from bird flu to rising costs, so any innovation must be genuinely practical and work in the real world.”

Noble Foods said the system is intended to complement, rather than replace, farmers’ own knowledge and routine flock checks.

Emily Marshall, agriculture sustainability manager at Noble Foods, said: “This is not about replacing good stockmanship but complementing it with better data.”

She said there was increasing scrutiny around how hen welfare is measured and discussed across the sector.

“There is growing interest – and scrutiny – around how we talk about hen welfare, and rightly so. This project is about going beyond assurance alone and exploring how emerging science can give us deeper, more continuous insight into the lived experience of the bird, whether that’s within a free-range or barn environment,” she said.

Current welfare monitoring in egg production often relies on standards, audits and assurance schemes, which can provide only periodic snapshots of conditions on farm.

The trial will explore whether continuous, non-invasive sound monitoring can add another layer of information by flagging changes as they happen.

Within the project team, the technology has been nicknamed the ‘Happy-o-Meter’ because of its focus on indicators of bird wellbeing.

Casey Woodward, chief executive of AgriSound, said the work would extend the company’s use of bioacoustic technology into poultry welfare.

“This project demonstrates how AgriSound’s expertise in bioacoustics AI can be applied beyond pollinators to help address some of the most important challenges in animal agriculture,” he said.

Noble Foods and AgriSound have previously worked together on bioacoustic pollinator monitoring on farms, with that project helping to inform wider use of sound-based data in agriculture.

Aviasenze is also involved in the development of the monitoring system, with the trial examining whether automated analysis can help farm teams respond more quickly to emerging flock problems.

Heather Sanders of Aviasenze said: “Chicken welfare is not only an ethical responsibility but a crucial driver of productivity. Even small improvements to egg production results in substantial benefits to a farmer’s bottom line and UK food security.”

Noble Foods said the project is not being presented as a finished welfare solution, but as a research-led trial designed to test assumptions and generate evidence.

Findings will be reviewed throughout the two-year programme and shared with egg producers and industry stakeholders.

The results are expected to help determine where acoustic monitoring could add practical value to welfare management and where further development is still needed.