The Use of Infrared Thermography in the Assessment of Stress, Health and Metabolism in Domestic Animals

The early assessment of animal stress, disease and metabolism is pivotal to being able to manage the efficient production of high-density food of animal origin. The inclusion of precision farming sensors is likely to enhance production, animal wellbeing, and reduce the environmental foot print of modern livestock production. Many tools are available for this purpose such as wearable accelerometers, visual image analysis, respiration chambers, and biomarkers analysis. However, the current scale of modern animal agriculture production dictates that such tools need to be non-invasive, non-destructive, cost effective, capable of real time delivery of data, are automatable, computer compatible, require minimum labour input, and are internet enabled. The use of infrared thermography scanning systems are one of the few tools currently suited for this purpose. The current manuscript presents a review of research findings pertaining to the use of infrared thermography with emphasis on the research conducted in Canada and collaborating research groups. The utility of infrared thermography as an early and non-invasive technology in stress detection, metabolic studies and early disease detection is demonstrated.