Monitoring of the individual drinking behaviour of healthy weaned piglets and pregnant sows

8e European Conference on Precision Livestock Farming (ECPLF), le 12-14 septembre 2017, Nantes, in : Precision Livestock Farming 17, 2017, par Yvonnick Rousselière, Anne Hémonic et Michel Marcon Trials were conducted on the experimental station of Ifip in Romillé (Brittany, France) to assess the individual dinking behavior of healthy weaned piglets and pregnant sows. To collect this type of data, a specific connected drinker has been developed. It is composed of an antiwastage bowl drinker surrounded by shoulder partitions, a precision water meter (± 0.01 l for piglets and ± 0.1 l for sows) and a RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) antenna to detect animals near the drinker thanks to the electronic and individual ear tag on each pig. Observations on animals have been made twice a week to evaluate their health status. This study only focuses on healthy animals. Weaned piglets were bred in pens of 19 animals. On average, the individual water consumption was 10.7% of body weight. Sows were bred in a dynamic group equipped with 6 connected drinkers and automatic feeders. On average, the daily water consumption was 8.2l/day (1.6l during the meal and 6.6l directly to bowl drinker). For the two types of animal, it exists an important inter and intra individual variability on the water consumption (more than 30%). Thus, working only on the health status of piglets or sows only thanks to the drinking behavior seems to be difficult. The next step is to cross this information with other data (feeding system, automatic weighing station, accelerometer…) to determine a behavioral pattern of healthy animals.