New Technology Aims to Improve Early Disease Detection in Swine Herds
The winning project in the Merck Animal Health High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award contest aims to improve early disease detection in swine herds by implementing next-generation technology that monitors the feeding and drinking behavior of pigs, as well as their weight gain, to detect acute and chronic illnesses and anomalous events.
Led by Tami Brown-Brandl, PhD, professor of Biological Systems Engineering at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the project titled “Next-Generation Grow-Finish Swine Health and Growth Monitoring,” utilizes radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on the ear of each pig that track when it eats and drinks. This allows researchers to pick up on the pigs that go off feed more quickly. Depth cameras are used in tandem to measure the weight of the pigs, providing more accuracy than the naked eye and experience alone.
As with humans, when pigs don’t feel well, the animal will typically eat and drink less. Inspiration for the technological breakthrough came for Brown-Brandl and her team, which includes Yijie Xiong and Raj Sharma, following an outbreak of pneumonia in their research barns. They had been monitoring the eating and drinking habits of the pigs and noticed that feeding behavior was off days before animal care takers noticed pneumonia in the pigs.
“The RFID tag goes in the ear of the pig, and when the pig puts its head in the feeder, the system will pick up the ear tag and record that the pig’s head was in the feeder. If the pigs are just walking by the feeder, it doesn't pick the tag up. The pig’s head actually has to enter the feeder,” Brown-Brandl says. “This will allow us to detect animals that go off feed for a variety of reasons. We might not be able to pick up the specific type of illness, but we'll pick up places in which we need management intervention and can say, ‘Please go check this group of animals because these animals are off of feed.’”
One of the great things about the RFID technology being utilized is that it’s scalable. Whether it’s a small farm or large commercial operation hogs, the technology and monitoring system will work.
The other aspect of the project focuses on weighing the hogs. In commercial operations, judging which animals have reached market weight is done on visual observation by the animal caretaker who has to make a judgement call, Brown-Brandl says. It takes experience and can be difficult. That’s where depth cameras can come into play.
“The second part of our project will be to monitor the weight of all the pigs on a daily basis, which we're doing with a special camera called a depth camera. It gives you the distance from the camera to all the pixels, this allows us to capture the volume of the pig, and that volume is very closely related to weight,” she says.
A secondary goal for the project is to then create a dashboard of all the data that a producer or animal caretaker could use to see a quick snapshot of what’s going on with their herd, and more quickly and easily intervene should an issue arise.
“With a dashboard, you can pull the information in and summarize it, and then a producer can quickly look at it and say ‘Okay, these are the pigs that I know I need to look at. I have three pigs in pen six I need to look at. And I have 25 pigs in pen eight that are ready to be marketed.’ Being able to put that dashboard together so the producer can see it before going to the barn will make the job more efficient,” Brown-Brandl says.
The Merck Animal Health High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award builds on the company’s heritage and commitment to scientific excellence and innovation. When the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the original format of the High-Quality Pork Award, in which the winner would travel to three different Merck Animal Health High- Quality Pork events around the world, the company decided to take its focus on innovation and technology and make it central to the revamped High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award.
Instead of the typical essay format, entrants completed a virtual “Shark-Tank”-like pitch process that included a video, and now Brown-Brandl will partner with the judge who scored her team’s project highest to test and implement the idea, much as the “Shark” works with the entrepreneur that pitches their product on the show. The award also includes a grant of up to $200,000 to implement the project, says Rika Jolie, DVM, PhD, global swine lead for Merck Animal Health (known as MSD Animal Health outside of the U.S. and Canada).
“There were 32 total entries from around the world, and 30 of them really fit all of the entry criteria. This shows that there is a very strong interest, and a lot of innovators out there, to bring digital technology into swine farms,” says Jolie.
The judges were impressed with Brown-Brandl’s project in particular because it was well-rounded, addressing labor efficiencies as well as animal well-being, Jolie says.
“It was well-rounded with respect to animal well-being and the efficiency of labor of activities on the farm, and also efficiencies around raising the animal and bringing the animal to market and making the right decision around which animals are ready to go to market,” Jolie says.
As for future applications, in addition to the potential for better animal care, Brown-Brandl also hopes this system could help with the labor retention issues that are seen in the swine industry by changing some aspects of the job and making them more technology based.
“We have a really hard time getting people into taking care of pigs. There's a turnover issue and finding a sick pig in a pen is not something you can necessarily put in a training video. It takes time. You can show a new employee how to find a sick pig, but until they've done it for a while, they aren't going to be as effective,” Brown-Brandl says. “I think this technology will help even experienced people find sick pigs faster, but is especially important for less experienced people.”
