Electronic feeder to record individual feed intake on rabbits raised in collective cages

Individual recording of feed intake of animals raised in groups is essential to improve feed efficiency in breeding programs and also for research on nutrition, feeding behaviour, health and animal welfare. We have designed and manufactured 30 devices allowing such recording. In this work, we present the device, showing the type of raw data it produces as well as how this information is edited.  Raw visits recorded are merged to meals at a rate of approximately 0.6-0.65 (meals/visits), and approximately 40-45% of the declared meals have associated null feed intake records. Thus, the relative high proportion of visits with misidentification (25%) actually do not have serious consequences since they affect mainly to short meals with actually no intake. In spite that we are already working with the described device, the software for editing information provided by the feeder is still under development and improvement to increase the quality of the feed intake recorded information.