ABSTRACT

Use of computing equipment together with telecommunication infrastructure brings novel capabilities to monitoring and managing animal health. Nigerian farmers have suffered enormous loss of livestock through death, reduced productivity and loss of market for product as a result of a swarm of diseases which barrage livestock in Nigeria. This casualty has remained a colossal challenge to farmers. The research give deeper insights into the challenges faced by livestock farmers in Nigeria, to highlight the technique used to monitor animal health and predict disease together with establishing the data and information required to monitor animal health at a farm. This study further proposes an expert system model for animal health monitoring using expert system. An expert system is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence technologies to simulate the judgment and behavior of a human or an organization that has expert knowledge and experience in a particular field. The expert system model enables the automation of the process of animal health management at a farm including recording farm, farmers and animal details, predicting animal disease and monitoring of animal health. It provides a platform where the farmer and a veterinary expert can collaborate. The platform enables the farmer to give details of animal after which the record is stored in a database. Furthermore, the health of the animal can be monitored to recovery. The methodology used in this research include interview. observation and reading related materials which gave the researcher deeper insight with respect to the investigation. More so, the researcher used agile software development model because it involves pairwise programming and does not follow a rigid approach to program development.