Mobile Device and Software for Automating Body Measurements in Sheep

Abstract

In sheep farming, the process of body measurement of animals is of fundamental importance, as they are hereditary characteristics, which reflect on meat production and body development. However, breeders still perform body measurements on animals, mostly by manual methods. The objective of this article is to present a computational solution, composed of a mobile device for automating data collection in sheep, through sensors, in addition to a software to process and find body measurements. For the proposed solution, the mobile device was built using Arduino technology with sensors, and the software was developed in RubyOnRails framework. To validate the computational solution, measurements were made with manual equipment (current solution employed by the producers) and compared using the error to identify the noise caused. Thus, the average relative errors of 7.44 % for withers height, 7.61 % for rump height, 7.19 % for chest girth, 6.45 % for body length, 13.48 % for Weight and 10.76 % for Depth, presenting the mean and standard deviation of automatic measurements close to manual measurements.  It is concluded that the body measurements performed in an automated way, allow greater agility in the measurements, in relation to the traditional (manual) measurements, which require a lot of work with the animal in the correct measurement posture and demands time.