Artificial intelligence and computer vision tools are being developed to monitor individual livestock welfare through automated facial and behavioural analysis.
One of the fundamental challenges in large-scale livestock farming is that individual animal welfare monitoring becomes practically difficult as herd sizes grow. A stockperson responsible for hundreds or thousands of animals cannot observe each individual daily with the attention needed to catch early welfare deterioration. Technology offers a partial solution: automated systems that continuously monitor behavioural and physiological indicators can flag individuals for human attention, effectively extending the reach of welfare monitoring beyond what manual observation can achieve. The welfare value of these technologies depends on their accuracy, on farmers acting on alerts promptly, and on using technology to supplement rather than replace stockmanship skills. They represent a promising direction for making large-scale farming more compatible with individual animal welfare.