Edmanuel Cruz

Abstract Broiler chicken production is a cornerstone of global food security, yet monitoring animals in commercial farms remains challenging due to high stocking densities and variable environmental conditions. Progress in automated monitoring is hindered by the scarcity of domain-specific, publicly available datasets.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

1. Introduction Chicken meat, one of the world’s most consumed proteins, contributes billions of euros annually to the global economy [1,2]. In 2024, global poultry production is projected to reach approximately 138.75 million metric tons, marking a significant increase from 115 million metric tons in 2016. This growth aligns with a broader trend in agriculture, where poultry has surpassed other meat types in production volume [3], as illustrated in Figure 1.