Study and consideration of the daily individual physical activity when estimating the energy needs of gestating sow

Back to jobs listing

INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

Applications will be examined on a rolling basis for the start of the internship between January and the end of March 2025.

Nutritional models currently used to estimate the individual requirements of gestating sows consider a unique average value of physical activity (standing time per day). This value does not take into account inter-individual variability within the herd, nor variability over the time.  Thus, it could lead to an under or over-estimation of energy daily requirements and therefore of feed supplies. Indeed, the standing position requires twice as much energy as when lying down. Accelerometer sensors attached to the animal enable individual physical activity to be measured continuously and accurately, but they are expensive, fragile and have a limited lifetime. Analysing physical activity via video is a good alternative, especially if it can be automated. An algorithm is currently being developed by DILEPIX company to provide individual physical activity values thanks to video analysis.

The aim of this internship is to assess the contribution of integrating the individual activity of gestating sows from video analysis in estimating their energy requirements. First, the physical activity data outputs from DILEPIX’s video analysis will be compared with accelerometer data, which will serve as a control measurement. Then, for the days during which video analysis is not available yet because it takes a lot of computing time, individual physical activity estimations will be made. Finally, simulations will be carried out to calculate nutritional requirements integrating individual daily activity. The simulations outputs (i.e. energy requirements) will be compared with the requirements initially estimated with a unique physical activity for all sows. This internship will be carried out at the UMR PEGASE (Saint-Gilles, Brittany, France) in the SYSMO team and will be co-supervised by Charlotte Gaillard, a researcher competent in animal nutrition, behaviour and processing of farm data, and Clément Ribas, a PhD student involved in precision feeding for sows. This internship is granted by #DigitAg (Institut Convergences Agriculture Numérique, https://www.hdigitag.fr/fr/ ).

Firstly, the intern will visualise, clean and aggregate at the daily level, available physical activity data in the aim to compare the 2 methods used to get individual physical activity (accelerometers and videos). Secondly, individual physical activity estimations will be made on days where videos analysis are not available yet, by using several exploratory methods and available video analysis. These predictions will be compared to accelerometers data available continuously during the gestation. Finally, with the help of a PhD student, simulations will be carried out with a nutritional model to estimate individual requirements by using daily individual physical activity estimated in the previous steps. The intern will compare model outputs with requirements initially assessed with a unique physical activity for all sows every day of gestation. 

 

Training and skills

Internship for Master 2 student or student in the last year of engineering school. Knowledge of animal sciences (notably porcine systems) and skills in data management and exploration (R language, Python).

Specialist in livestock with an appetite for data analysis; science math/info and statistics.

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter