Infrared thermography is a method which detects infrared energy emitted from an object and then converts it to temperature and displays the image of temperature distribution. That image is called a thermograph or thermogram. The image appears in a colour palette. Recently the thermal imagery has been used in wide category of veterinary sciences like diagnosis of foot and leg problems in cattle/ horses (Schmidtet al., 2003), assessment of scrotal temperatures as a measure of fertility in bulls and rams (Gabor et al., 1998), evaluating the heat stress in dairy cattle (White et al., 2006), assessment of body condition score (Halachmietal., 2013), appraisal of meat quality (Tong et al., 1995), assessment of productivity, including of heat and methane production (Montanholiet al., 2008), Assessment of feed efficiency (Montanholiet al., 2009), pregnancy detection (Hilsberget al., 1997) and to differentiate between pregnancy and pseudopregnancy (Durrantet al., 2006). Using thermal imagery tool has many advantages in animal management viz. non-invasive and non-destructive, fast, accurate temperature measurements, easy to install, capable of catching moving targets and measuring temperature in inaccessible or hazardous areas. However, factors such as environmental variables, surface texture and condition, skin colour, age of animals are given due consideration while interpreting the results.
Key words: Thermal imaging, animal heath and livestocks
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