Assessing stress of animals in experiments is a major challenge. For many mammalian species a so-called "facial expression score" has been developed and validated, where various facial expressions are scored to assess stress or pain. Would this work also in chicken? Chicken are a frequently used species for research of infectious diseases.

The objectives of this project are to identify stress or pain related facial expression or body postures in chicken that can be used for a pain or stress assessment. It has to be noted, that the facial musculature of birds differs significantly from that of mammals. With images of chicken labeled “in pain” and “not in pain” we want to construct an algorithm that can learn to differentiate both groups. Then we want to identify the face/body signals that are most important for the algorithm to identify pain. In cooperation with the Institute for poultry diseases of the Veterinary Faculty of Freie Universität Berlin we want to evaluate whether these body signals are suitable for stress assessment of chicken in practice.

Chicken of the breed "Deutscher Sperber" of the BfR