Nedap Webinar : Make your farm future proof
On-demand: Webinar on smart data use on a pig farm
Another Pig Progress webinar is now available for review. A recently held webinar in cooperation with Nedap Livestock Management focused on the question how to make a pig farm future proof, with the clever use of modern technology and data management applications.
The webinar was broadcasted live on Friday, October 30, from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Three expert speakers shared their views on the increasing importance of precision agriculture and how data can improve management.
The last meter in the pig barn
Introductory speaker Martin Enderink, global sales manager at Nedap Livestock Management, introduced the idea of ‘the last meter’. He said that the entire process of feed management got professionalised over the last decades. He said, “The farmer nowadays is more like a farm supervisor or a farm manager. He does not see the individual animals on a daily basis.” He continued to say, “Perfectly designed feed goes into a truck, silo and feeding line, but at the end we just drop it in front of the animals and then… let’s hope that all the individual animals consume the feed. There is a bit of a missing link.”
Enderink introduced Nedap’s “sensored solutions,” placing many sensors in a barn to follow individual animals, measuring what they do, what they consume and how much they weigh.
One place where many data can be collected is with gestating sows – that was the topic of the presentation of Hans Hoevink, business development manager Asia at Nedap. Using RFID tags per animal, a lot of the sow behaviour can be monitored – the Electronic Sow Feeding systems are the most well-known example of that.
Hoevink zoomed in on automatic weighing data collection, an application that will run 24/7. He said, “All the sows will be identified and will be going over the weighing scales. We know exactly which sow has which weight at which date.” He then summed up a range of reasons what benefits there are to know the sows’ body weight.
Providing right rations to lactating sows
Complementary to close monitoring during gestation is keeping a similar kind of oversight during lactation. As these circumstances are different, solutions need to be different too. Jose Simeone, sales and account manager Latin America at Nedap explained about solutions that can be applied in this phase of the cycle.
Simeone said that in modern sow production, sows should be provided rations according to their individual needs and they should be supplied with small amounts, daily and nightly. To that end, he discussed Nedap automated feeding solution, meeting those requirements, and capable of identifying sows with low feed intake.
