Deep Convolutional Neural Network for Chicken Diseases Detection

For many years in the society, farmers rely on experts to diagnose and detect chicken diseases. As a result, farmers lose many domesticated birds due to late diagnoses or lack of reliable experts. With the available tools from artificial intelligence and machine learning based on computer vision and image analysis, the most common diseases affecting chicken can be identified easily from the images of chicken droppings. In this study, we propose a deep learning solution based on Convolution Neural Networks (CNN) to predict whether the faeces of chicken belong to either of the three classes. We also leverage the use of pre-trained models and develop a solution for the same problem. Based on the comparison, we show that the model developed from the XceptionNet outperforms other models for all metrics used. The experimental results show the apparent gain of transfer learning (validation accuracy of 9􀀀% using pretraining over its contender 􀀁􀀂.􀀃􀀄% developed CNN from fully training on the same dataset). In general, the developed fully trained CNN comes second when compared with the other model. The results show that pre-trained XceptionNet method has overall performance and highest prediction accuracy, and can be suitable for chicken disease detection application.