In most European countries broilers are currently caught manually: broilers are caught by the leg, inverted and carried by a catcher with 3–4 birds in each hand. This method of catching broiler chickens is a welfare concern as it causes severe stress to the birds. A possible alternative to manual catching may be mechanical catching. The aim of this study was to compare the level of stress and injuries of broilers caught manually or with a harvesting machine (CIEMME Super Apollo L harvester) under commercial conditions. The results indicated that there was no significant difference in plasma corticosterone concentrations and duration of tonic immobility, which suggested that mechanically caught broilers were no more stressed than those caught manually. At the end of the catching process, mechanically caught broilers had even lower plasma corticosterone concentrations and shorter durations of tonic immobility, indicating that at this moment these broilers were less stressed than the manually caught birds. The incidence of wing haemorrhages was also reduced for broilers caught mechanically; however, there was no significant difference in the incidence of haemorrhages in the breast or legs between the two catching methods. As injuries are associated with pain and stress, this parameter is important not only for the welfare of the birds but also for product quality and the subsequent financial return. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of the mechanical harvesting machine, CIEMME Super Apollo L, appears to be a good alternative to manual catching. Nevertheless, some aspects of mechanical catching require further improvement.

Fractures occurring in conscious broiler chickens are painful and severely compromise animal welfare. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of pre-slaughter handling procedures on the frequency of wing fractures. Wings were examined for fractures in 11,609 broilers, from 12 different flocks, slaughtered in two abattoirs: one using bi-phasic CO2 stunning (CS); and one using electric water-bath stunning (ES). The same broilers were examined: i) in lairage, representing fractures attributed to catching and transportation; ii) after evacuation of transport containers and shackling (only ES); and iii) post-stunning. The mean frequencies of wing fractures were: in the lairage; 0.8% (CS 0.73%, ES 0.88%); after shackling prior to stunning; 2.90% (only ES); and after stunning; 2.35% (CS 1.80%, ES 2.90%). Regardless of stunning method, significantly more fractures occurred during pre-slaughter handling at the abattoirs than during catching/transportation. The difference in prevalence between CS and ES was not significant. All fractures observed in the ES occurred in conscious animals, whereas in the CS it was not possible to distinguish between fractures occurring in conscious or stunned broilers. From a welfare perspective, fractures occurring on-farm/transport result in prolonged suffering and are thus considered more serious in risk assessments of broiler welfare, even though more fractures occur at the abattoir. Monitoring of wing fractures at abattoirs should be included as an indicator of broiler welfare.

This paper presents a new combined 9-DOF [3R-3R-3R] parallel architecture to perform the object catching in the real-time scenario. The architecture design is intended to carry heavy payload objects for the catching. This paper covers modelling the new architecture, kinematics, and dynamic analyses to compute torques/forces at the actuators. The simulation of kinematic and dynamic analysis in MATLAB. Vision sensors, encoders, PID controller, and current limiting are used to perform object catching. The architecture is the only delta robot application designed to catch regular-shaped objects in real-time scenarios.

This paper proposes a vision-based kinematic analysis and kinematic parameters identification of the proposed architecture, designed to perform the object catching in the real-time scenario. For performing the inverse kinematics, precise estimation of the link lengths and other parameters needs to be present. Kinematic identification of Delta based upon Model10 implicit model with ten parameters using the iterative least square method is implemented. The loop closure implicit equations have been modelled. In this paper, a vision-based kinematic analysis of the Delta robots to do the catching is discussed. A predefined library of ArUco is used to get a unique solution of the kinematics of the moving platform with respect to the fixed base. The re-projection error while doing the calibration in the vision sensor module is 0.10 pixels. Proposed architecture interfaced with the hardware using the PID controller. Encoders are quadrature and have a resolution of 0.15 degrees embedded in the experimental setup to make the system closed-loop (acting as feedback unit).

In recent years, broiler mortality during transport to the slaughterhouse has become a cause for concern because of animal welfare considerations and associated economic losses. A descriptive and analytical epidemiological study was carried out to estimate the extent of DoA in poultry broiler production in the main producing regions of France and to determine factors influencing the DoA rate. Data regarding animal characteristics and rearing, catching, transport and lairage conditions were collected on farm and at the slaughterhouse for 404 chicken broiler flocks processed during 2005. The average DoA rate was 0.18% (from 0% to 1.4%). Variables found to be associated (P < 0.05) with the DoA rate in a multivariable negative binomial model were flock cumulative mortality on farm, the catching system (mechanical being more at risk than manual), the density in crates (more space allowance being associated with less mortality) and climatic conditions (rain and wind being associated with more DoA). Mortality during transport is thus related to all production steps from the farm to the slaughterhouse. Efforts have therefore to be made by all professionals to contain mortality on farm and during catching and transportation.