Original Articles Open access

Acoustic feature analysis of normal and abnormal calls of white-feathered broilers

Authors

  • Bowen Sun – articles in this journal Corresponding author Email College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Xiangchao Kong – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Xingkai Peng – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Changxi Chen – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Wanchao Zhang – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Guangyu Zhao – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Yongmin Guo – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
  • Kaisi Yang – articles in this journal College of Computer and Information Engineering, Tianjin Agricultural University; Key Laboratory of Smart Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin, China.
Published
18 December 2025
Section
Original Articles
DOI
10.4081/jae.2025.1684

Abstract

This study investigates the acoustic characteristics of normal and abnormal calls in white-feathered broilers to propose a method for early detection of non-healthy conditions. Vocalizations were collected from 2-week-old broilers over a 21-day period and analyzed using time-domain and frequency-domain features, including maximum amplitude, effective amplitude, fundamental frequency, and pulse index. Significant differences were identified between normal calls and abnormal calls influenced by laryngeal mucus, with support vector machines and random forest classifiers achieving accuracies of 97.8% and 98.76%, respectively. Unlike previous empirical feature aggregation methods, this research employs statistically validated feature selection aligned with physiological mechanisms, enhancing interpretability and performance. The proposed framework offers a practical, automated solution for on-farm monitoring of broiler vocalizations, contributing to early detection of abnormal signs and improved management in precision poultry farming.

Keywords

Data Availability Statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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