Low-Cost Cameras & AI Can Automatically Estimate the Weight of Broiler Chickens

SMART technology uses low-cost cameras & AI to automatically estimate the weight of broiler chickens

Flock weight measurements are an important part of broiler chicken management systems. This information is used to help decide when to remove chickens from, or depopulate, the house, and also to monitor bird health and welfare. Currently, a percentage of the birds are typically weighed manually (e.g. 1% of birds in the house) or using automatic weighing platforms. Manual weighing is labor intensive and may disturb the birds, while differences between birds may not always provide representative weights.

Queen’s University Belfast researchers are developing FlockFocus, a camera-based technology that tracks activity and estimates chicken weight without manual weighing or using weighing platforms. There is a multidisciplinary team involved in this project, with key roles played by Senior Engineer Katerine Diaz Chito and Animal Behaviour and Welfare Scientist Mairead Campbell. A March 2025 study in Smart Agriculture Technology (Vol. 10) details their low-cost system using overhead cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate broiler (meat) chickens’ weights automatically.

What The Researchers Did:

• Tested Video Features

  Researchers analyzed video images of tracked birds to see if differences in bounding box (the box around a chicken in the video) features could predict their weight.

• Checked Posture & Age Effects

  Researchers studied whether a chicken’s posture (sitting or standing) and age affected the accuracy of weight estimates.

• Tried the System on a Real Farm

  The best method was tested in a more realistic setting (over a feeding area) using an automated system to detect and track chickens over a wider age range.

• What The Researchers Discovered

  • The bounding box feature that best predicted body weight was identified.
  • Chicken age, not posture, improved accuracy.
  • The system struggled with very young chicks, those under five days old.
  • The system performed well overall, with an average error of about 7%.

See This Research in Action

This Technology Could Enhance Poultry Industry Productivity & Animal Welfare.

This research demonstrates a significant advancement in machine vision technology for the broiler chicken sector. It identified the most appropriate model features to estimate the body weight of tracked birds and demonstrated their use in individual birds under farm conditions. The average error rate was just 7%, and with further refinement, this technology has the potential to replace manual weighing methods, reducing labor costs and minimizing stress on the birds. Further refinement is required, but if ultimately widely adopted, this system could improve farm efficiency, provide real-time flock data and help farmers make more informed management decisions.

Related Scientific Publications

1. A computer vision approach to monitor activity in commercial broiler chickens using trajectory-based clustering analysis (2024)
2. Automated weight estimation of broiler chickens using 2D computer vision (2025)

About the SMART Broiler Research Program

In 2019, the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and McDonald’s Corporation launched the SMART Broiler program, a public-private partnership investing $4 million in two phases of research grants to develop technology to objectively monitor chicken welfare on commercial farms worldwide. In Phase I, six projects received a total of $2,092,439 to test and refine potential solutions. From those six, three projects together received an additional $1.63 million in Phase II to refine and validate their technology and prepare for large-scale adoption. These finalists were then invited to apply for final funding to bring their innovations to market. Niamh O’Connell and Paul Miller received funding in Phase I and Phase II for their research entitled Flockfocus – Developing Automated Surveillance Tools to Safeguard Chicken Welfare. They received a $399,616 supplemental award in 2025 to continue the development of their technology.