Methods and systems for using sound data to analyze health condition and welfare states in collections of farm animals

A system for monitoring sounds generated from a farm animal operation during a farm animal operation sound monitoring event comprising:

• a) an edge computing device in operational engagement with at least:
• i) a cloud computing server configured with a first machine learning library, the first machine learning library comprising a collection of farm animal operation reference sound data information derived from reference audio stream data acquired from a plurality of farm animal operation reference sound monitoring events, wherein the collection of farm animal operation reference sound data information incorporates information associated with one or more selected farm animal operation condition states;
• ii) a second machine learning library, wherein the second machine learning library comprises a selected subset of farm animal operation reference sound data information associated with a presence or absence of one or more farm animal operation condition states of interest;
• iii) audio stream acquisition capability in communications engagement with the edge computing device;
• and
• iv) a power source;
• where the edge computing device is configured to:
• a) receive first farm animal operation sound information in a first farm animal operation sound monitoring event of a first farm animal operation identified for monitoring for a presence or absence of the one or more condition states of interest, wherein the first farm animal operation comprises a collection of farm animals;
• b) compare the received first farm animal operation sound information with one or more selected farm animal operation reference sound types selected from the first machine learning library comprising a collection of farm animal operation information wherein:
• i) the collection of farm animal operation information comprises a plurality of farm animal operation reference sound types generated from one or more farm animal operations in a plurality of prior farm animal operation sound collection events associated with the one or more farm animal operations;
• ii) each selected farm animal operation reference sound type is associated with a presence or absence of a specific farm animal operation condition state of interest;
• and
• iii) prior to incorporation in the collection of farm animal operation information, each farm animal operation reference sound type has been validated by a human reviewer as being associated with the presence or absence of each specific farm animal operation condition state of interest;
• c) detect whether at least one of the one or more selected farm animal operation reference sound types is present in the received first farm animal operation sound information;
• and
• d) generate information about a presence or absence of each specific farm animal operation condition state of interest in the first farm animal operation during the first farm animal operation sound monitoring event.