As piggery management becomes more complex, greater precision is required. Danish producers were particularly interested in the financial returns from real-time monitoring of key parameters such as ventilation, temperature and feed supply, said Dr Douglas, data services manager for Reading-based energy and control company, Farmex.

Farmex uses sophisticated, real-time monitoring, marketed as ‘Barn Report Pro’, which connects pig units, other remote livestock sites or crop stores to the internet continuously and provides help for farmers through its Data Services team. Information on all aspects of production can be accessed quickly and efficiently using a browser. In the case of piggeries, temperature, electricity use and water consumption can contribute to more complex analyses of health, growth rate and feed conversion.

Dr Douglas pointed out that benefits of monitoring can range from simply picking up interruptions to feed or water supply, to early disease detection.

Over 300 sites in the UK, Europe and the USA are now being monitored by Farmex’s Barn Report Pro service and the system is identifying many ways in which management and the environment can be fine-tuned. For instance, monitoring feeding regimes enables accurate information to be passed to the farm’s nutritionist, and even behavioural patterns can be detected.

“It can be seen that monitoring can help farmers and managers make informed decisions through data capture, processing and analysis,” said Dr Douglas. She felt it critical that there is ability to view all hardware and software performance on one ‘platform’ to help with this. Large financial savings have been recorded as a result of monitoring.

As reported by Farmex