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Better Pork
December 2016
7
COMPUTERIZED
HOG
BARN
HOGBARN
that his operation gained from new
technology employed by his genet-
ics and feed suppliers. Regarding
the use of technology on the farm,
Adam noted a clear generational
difference between himself and his
parents. But he also described Clare
– a high-profile former Ontario
Pork chair and former Canadian
Pork Council president – as an early
adopter of computer technology.
The increasing availability of
computer technology for livestock
management and recent changes to
Canada’s Code of Practice for the
Care and Handling of Pigs mandat-
ing greater movement for gestating
sows in pens appear to have prompt-
ed a round of new investment in
buildings and renovations. Numbers
and costs are hard to come by, and
the size of such investments varies
widely.
In the emerging age of robotic
tractors and global positioning
systems (GPS) to guide precision
field work, smart barns seem almost
inevitable. Robots are already in
use in dairy barns to milk cows and
sweep floors.
In a smart hog barn, robots can
powerwash stalls and lead can-
tankerous boars. There are digital
machines to detect the heats of sows
and to feed, water and weigh pigs.
Other machines manage feed inven-
tory, ventilation and manure stor-
age; still other machines assess the
health status of and financial returns
on a batch of pigs.
University of Saskatchewan
ethologist Jennifer Brown, who
heads Canada’s National Sow Hous-
ing Conversion Project (NSHCP)
to educate producers about group-
housing techniques, described a
Spanish feeding system that in-
corporates weigh scales capable of
matching feed records with the body
weight of individual animals. New
data is one side-effect of the current
shift to group housing for sows and
the adoption of ESF technology.
“We do expect to see more regu-
lar monitoring and individual moni-
toring that allows you to manage
individual pig data,” Brown said in
an interview from her Prairie Swine
Centre office in Saskatoon. She cited
recent research at both the Univer-
Dianne, Calvin, Travis, and Francis Brekelmans have a farrow-to-wean
operation near Thamesford, Ont. They have group housing arrangements
and an ESF system. See related story on page 12.