Research on white feather broiler health monitoring method based on sound detection and transfer learning

•Newly propose a livestock vocalization-based white feather broiler health monitoring method.•First apply the transfer learning to the white feather broiler health monitoring study.•Newly propose an improved TrAdaBoost algorithm.•Newly propose evaluation index applicable to the sound type identification, identification accuracy.•Classification models achieve satisfactory classification accuracy and identification accuracy.•This study provides a new way for white feather broiler health monitoring research.