As researchers search for tools to automate individual animal tracking, particularly in the livestock industry, they come across papers that make strong claims about the ability of such programs to accurately track individual animals within group-housed laboratory settings and imply that this ability will translate to other situations and species. We selected four of these programs (idTracker, ToxTrac, BioTracker, and Ctrax) and tested their ability to track single, pairs, and groups of pigs in an indoor pen typical of commercial farms and a pen modified to improve lighting, contrast, and camera location. We concluded that at present, these four tracking programs do not perform robustly enough to be adapted for use processing videos from commercial-style pig farms, including smaller research farms. It is hoped that identifying limitations of detection programs can help make systems more robust and user-friendly for future use.