Penn State Tests Drones and AI to Monitor Turkey Flocks
Turkeys was the focus of many holiday meals, so as you eat your left-over turkey ponder the ag-tech methods being used in turkey production.
Researchers at Penn State are advancing technology that could reshape the way poultry producers keep track of their flocks. A research group headed by Penn State animal scientist Enrico Casella has demonstrated a promising system that combines drones and artificial intelligence to monitor turkey behavior more efficiently on large farms.
Farmers rely on regular observation to ensure both productivity and animal welfare, but doing so manually demands considerable time and labor. To streamline this process, the team tested whether a small drone equipped with a camera and computer vision tools could automatically detect and categorize behavioral patterns in turkeys.
Casella, an assistant professor of data science for animal systems in the College of Agricultural Sciences and member of the Penn State Institute of Computational and Data Sciences, noted that this project marks the first documented attempt to assess drone-based behavioral tracking in commercial-style poultry settings.
“This work provides proof of concept that drones plus AI can potentially become an effective, low-labor method for monitoring turkey welfare in commercial production,” Casella said. “It lays the groundwork for more advanced, scalable systems in the future.”
During the project, the drone captured video four times per day while flying above a flock of 160 turkeys between five and 32 days old at the Penn State Poultry Education and Research Center. From this footage, researchers pulled individual frames and built a dataset of more than 19,000 images showing various actions, including feeding, drinking, standing, huddling, sitting, wing flapping, and perching.
The images were used to train a YOLO computer vision model. The strongest model identified 87% of behaviors present and classified actions with 98% accuracy.
As Casella explained, “The study shows that a drone equipped AI system can accurately detect turkey behaviors.” He added that this approach could reduce labor needs and provide continuous, noninvasive welfare monitoring in commercial operations.