Relationship of Actual Weight to Derived Weight from Captured Image Surface Area of Landrace Pigs
M. A. M. Pangan, R.SA. Vega

ABSTRACT

Actual weighing of pigs to monitor their growth is very stressful to the animals.  There should be other means to monitor the live weights without causing any stress to the animals.  As an alternative, a surface analysis software called ImageJ® (National Institute of Health, USA), was used to estimate the live weight of the animals.  The said software was tested to determine if it will be a viable instrument in determining the live weights of the animal.  A total of 96 Landrace pigs (41 weanlings, 23 growers and 32 finishers) were photographed and analyzed using ImageJ® to estimate their body surface area.  The estimated surface area is then compared to the pig’s actual weight and the computed live weights using Javier’s (2001) and Lettiere’s (2004) formula.  It was found out that Lettiere’s formula was more reliable in estimating the live weights of finishing Landrace pigs. The study showed that the software successfully captured the shape and visual appearance of the pigs but the computed R2 is very far from the fitted regression line.  This only means that the software is not a good substitute in getting the live weights of pigs, since it only estimated the surface area of the images.

Keyword(s):

actual weight, captured image, relationship

Commodity:

Swine

Year:

2015

Discipline:

production