Work in pig houses is varied, time-consuming and demanding. During the daily managament round, numerous factors must be paid attention to and rated simultaneously – particularly to identify potential disease outbreaks in a timely manner. Among the important indicators to assess animal health are water and feed consumption. Based on intakes, staff can recognise early whether an animal is sick.
To render animal management easy and efficient for pig unit staff, the German pig equipment manufacturer WEDA Dammann & Westerkamp has developed its new Smart.Light solution. This innovation allows the status of feed intake of individual animals or pens to be indicated directly at each feeding valve.
The Smart.Light significantly eases and speeds up pig management. An LED lamp, which is clearly visible from a distance, displays different colours, allowing animals or pens with deviating feeding behaviour to be identified immediately. In this way, the management round can be carroed oit more quickly, and animals that may have fallen ill can be treated sooner.
The functional principle is simple and universally comprehensible: The Smart.Light consists of an LED lamp that displays a clear messages in the house directly by the animal or pen. For instance, if the pigs have consumed their feed allocation according to the feed curve, the lamp is off. If, however, only 80 per cent of the typical feed quantity has been consumed, the Smart.Light turns yellow. If this happens, the animals can be checked and the trough or sensor can be cleaned as necessary. If the feed quantity consumed falls to less than 80 per cent of the feed curve allocation, the Smart.Light turns red and the staff can act immediately.
The Smart.Light is controlled by WEDA’s proven Excellent 4PX feeding software. On a dedicated page in the program, the feeding data is recorded and evaluated over the course of several days. Users can specify which colour is displayed and when.
The Smart.Light can be installed next to the feed valve on a WEDA liquid feeding system, next to the valve on a Nutrix suckling piglet feeding system or next to the OptiMum doser.
Existing installations can be retrofitted.
For more information visit: www.weda.de.
