Livestock Equipment Technology

When the Part Breaks: New Warehouse is a Gamechanger for M&N Construction

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 18:24:08 GMT

It’s 4 a.m. and you get the call a customer had a fan motor go bad. Your day is full and now you must stop what you are doing to figure this out. Unfortunately, the stores don’t open for a while so what do you do?

When QC Supply’s Vice President of Sales Stephanie Nicholson approached Nick Wenger of M&N Ag Systems about putting a consignment warehouse on his home farm site, it was easy for him to say yes.

QC Supply will stock the various equipment they need at M&N Ag Systems , making it easy and efficient for Wenger and his father and co-owner, Mike, to take equipment directly to a barn job site instead of having to place an order and then have to pick it up from the dealer.

(Jennifer Shike, Mike Wenger)

“We get a lot of inventory from QC because we have many customers that use AP and we put in a lot of AP equipment,” Nick Wenger says. “Those bigger companies don’t want to wake up early in the morning and go get us a part out of their warehouse. With the travel times, having the ability to go out there, grab a motor at 4 a.m. and get it going by 5 a.m., and still have a full day of doing other things is a big aspect of it.”

Less Hassle, More Hours of Work

Nicholson says this is a unique opportunity for some of their customers.

“We have a couple other satellite warehouses with customers,” she says. “Our methodology is we come to you. We don’t expect you to come to us. I’m all about how can I make your life easier in doing your business and helping you be efficient? When they walk out the door, I want to have everything in their warehouse that they can pick up and take for the day.”

Mike Wenger thinks it will improve their efficiency.

“I was buying pallets of motors and parts, and that was all our money up front,” he says. “Then we had to wait for stuff to sell. QC approached us and said if we set up a building, they would supply it with the equipment we think we need and send somebody over once a week to take inventory and restock.”

They are using an existing 200-head nursery building as the warehouse. Mike Wenger says getting billed for what’s getting used is more convenient and provides a greater service for their customers, too.

“Having supplies on hand means we don’t have to order or wait to get delivered — that is one of the big things,” he says. “We try to keep on hand what we need. This just takes a bit of the hassle away when you’re trying to do so much.”

(Mike Wenger)

Or course, customers can still purchase online, but Nicholson says when a part breaks on the farm, getting it fixed immediately is important.

“In this model, we already know what they’re going to buy,” she says. “Now we can have those things at their fingertips to be able to make those repairs quickly.”

Return on Investment

With many great brands in the marketplace today, Nicholson says a lot of this is about choosing who you want to do business with now.

This relationship with the Wengers positions her to keep them updated on what technology is coming and where the industry is going. She wants to help them use the best technology and equipment to create the best environment for the pigs in the barn and the people working in the barn.

“Relationships matter,” she says. “When you build a relationship over time with a customer, you’ve worked to learn what’s best for them. I’m going to bring the return on investment to the products they use every day.”

Nicholson says she values her partnership with the Wengers.

“We understand each other,” she adds. “That’s a big part of it. Our relationship helps me know what’s most important to them at the time and into the future so we can start anticipating things that they will need and how we can work together.”

She admits it’s easy to support people who work hard every day and prioritize their customers.

“That work ethic is true to the core of who I am,” Nicholson says. “I was taught that no one’s going to hand you something. You have to go earn it yourself. Our work ethics definitely align so it makes fun to partner with them in this unique way.”

Read More:
Grit and Redemption: How the Past Helps a Father and Son Build a Future in Pork

Sensors on the Farm: Reliable Data Helps Producers Make Better Decisions

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 17:11:24 GMT

While the world was in lockdown in 2020, Jim Ryken started developing BarnTalk with BarnTools co-founder Michael Hansen. Growing up in the swine industry, they understood the shortcomings of traditional alarm systems that were created to protect barns and the livestock and poultry in them. Not only were these systems built in the 1990s outdated, but they were lacking reliability and remote visibility.

Ryken went to work during the COVID pandemic while he was home with his 13-year-old son and 70-year-old dad at the time to build a modern alarm system for livestock barns.

“My dad didn’t have a smartphone then,” Ryken says. “I knew if I could explain BarnTalk in a way that both my dad and son could understand, then I should be able to go talk to anybody in the industry and not make them be afraid of this technology.”

BarnTalk is a wireless alarm system that runs off an app on a cell phone, Ryken explains. He spent a lot of time thinking about how to make a system that is easy for farmers who don’t have a lot of time to use.

“I kept looking at consumer-grade User Interface (UI),” he says. “I kept thinking there had to be a way to feed those systems into animal agriculture to help with technology adoption. It is complicated, but it doesn’t have to look that way.”

(BarnTools)

Ryken says BarnTalk was developed to help improve operational efficiency and give growers a practical tool for monitoring what’s going on in their barns, especially when they’re not there.

“We didn’t have wireless communication when the first alarm systems were built,” he says. “We wanted to create a wireless system to do everything producers need from an alarming perspective, but also provide real-time insight like is it too hot in my barn? Are my pigs getting enough water?”

Reliable Return on Investment

In short, this technology can provide peace of mind to growers who no longer live right next to the barn, Ryken explains. But first, they had to solve the problem of connectivity on the farm.

“A lot of our early work was finding the right gateway that connects to all the cell towers and provides a connection to the internet from these rural areas that was never there before,” he says. “Once we solved that problem, we focused on building an app and getting wireless sensors in the barn that were easy to install.”

BarnTalk uses a DIY approach, Ryken explains. By creating something that is easy to install and has a ‘pretty low cost of entry,’ they wanted to provide tools that are not intimidating from a technical perspective or that will break their pocketbook.

That’s one of the reasons why Greg Wulf, director of production at Murphy Family Ventures LLC in southeast North Carolina, invested in this technology.

“We appreciate the simplicity, reliability and excellent customer service,” Wulf says.

For Wulf, the return on investment is what he appreciates most about making this purchase.

“In our situation, we did not have alarms to notify us of problems with power, environment or water,” Wulf says. “Barn Tools helps us avoid losses caused by equipment malfunction or operator error by notifying us of problems. Our ROI comes due to loss avoidance.”

As BarnTalk caught on with growers, BarnTools made a strategic pivot away from the challenges of steel manufacturing for hog gates in 2020 and focused their attention on providing technology for the grower.

(Barn Tools)

Strategic Sensors

BarnTools recently launched a second-generation feed bin sensor, BinTalk Pro that gives farmers insight into how much feed is in the bin. The sensor takes a reading every 15 minutes to help producers quickly detect any potential concerns.

“With this tool, farmers can start problem solving sooner,” Ryken says. “Is the bin out of feed? Did the feed stop flowing? Am I seeing a rapid depletion of feed? Is the feed just disappearing and it shouldn’t be? The sooner farmers can know about these problems, the better they can react.”

Several bin sensors are in each bin and every sensor in the bin is connected through a cellular connection, Ryken explains.

“Instead of putting a SIM card in every bin, we use one SIM in the gateway,” he says. “It connects to the cloud and creates a wireless network on the farm, so all bin sensors report through it.”

He says this is how BinTalk Pro can take a reading every 15 minutes because it doesn’t need to ‘ring up the cell connection’ and send data all the time.

“We recognize the real-time advantage of knowing what’s going on,” Ryken says. “Most feed bin sensors take a reading once a day, or once every four hours. By taking a reading every 15 minutes, we can limit the time an ‘event’ affects your animals. We take what the sensor sees and turn that into smart alarms that we can send to the growers.”

But pork producers aren’t the only ones who can benefit. The integrator and feed mill benefit, too. Sensors can optimize feed deliveries, which cuts down on waste and fuel emissions.

“As a turn comes to an end, we can make sure we don’t overdeliver feed before animals are sent off to market and create a reclaim event,” Ryken says. “Bin Talk Pro is a tool that can be used by growers, but it can be used up the supply chain to improve all the things affecting the most expensive part of raising animals -- the feed.”

(National Pork Board and the Pork Checkoff)

Water Watch

In the summer of 2022, Mike DeCap, vice president of crop and swine production at Grandview Farms Inc. in east central Iowa, says their farm became one of the first full-service adapters of BarnTalk.

“Getting updates every 15 minutes versus every four hours is the difference between seeing problems and solving them,” he says.

Grandview Farms strives to be on the forefront of technology to pick up efficiencies to raise a pound of pork and to protect their investments, DeCap explains.

“Once we met with BarnTools and learned that all employees could see into the finishers to visualize feed, temp, water and power, the decision was simple,” DeCap says.

Water meter sensors provide data to farmers every 15 minutes, too, Ryken says.

“It’s critical that your animals have the right amount of water and don’t run out,” he says. “If you have a water leak, you need to know about that fast or it could fill up your pit. Smart sensors notify you when leaks happen, so you don’t have to wait to find out when you get back to the farm the next morning.”

From a water perspective, Ryken is excited how sensors can help provide insights into pig health. BarnTools recently did some work with Brett Ramirez at Iowa State University. They watched a group of pigs get sick and how water consumption dropped off by about 25%. Within 48 hours, the caretaker had coughing pigs with scours, and the next day, some mortality.

“If you go back and look at the water data, two days before these clinical signs, we could have predicted this would happen,” Ryken says. “Water is such a powerful thing to monitor. I think it has the opportunity to change the way we medicate our animals whether that’s helping us medicate them earlier or treat them with something other than antibiotics to keep them from getting sick.”

He’s excited to see how data insight can continue to help the industry improve.

“We’re always listening to our customers about what data and sensors they need next,” Ryken says. “Sensors help us unlock potential in the industry that hasn’t been available before. There’s so much we can do with the data if we can get it off the farm. That’s really what we’re doing – helping get that data off the farm to ultimately help producers make better decisions.”

Why Livestock Operations Are Ditching Spreadsheets for BinSentry’s Smart Bin Technology

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:32:10 GMT

Animal feed travels a very long and winding supply chain, and up to 70% of the total cost of raising commercial animals is directly tied to the simple task of feeding the herd.

In a world where there are literally cameras and sensors everywhere that are able to measure everything, and artificial intelligence running in the background to make those cameras and sensors “smart,” it just doesn’t make sense to keep animal feed inventories on paper or Excel spreadsheets anymore.

Ben Allen, CEO, BinSentry

(BinSentry)

That’s what BinSentry CEO Ben Allen, who grew up in farming on his families’ Iowa farm outside Ames says, adding: “Too many people are still taking feed inventories the way my grandfather used too.”

His company has been on the animal ag scene for seven years and has grown over 100% annually for each of the past three years, he claims, as large commercial feedlots and multinational processors like Cargill add the companies’ bin monitoring technology to automate the logistics of refilling feed bins. Allen says BinSentry’s tech is capturing imagery 24/7/365 on more than 40,000 feed lots across the U.S. and Canada.

BinSentry recently secured a $50 million Series C investment round, led by the No. 1 growth equity fund in the U.S., Lead Edge Capital. Allen says his company will use the funds to, among other projects, expand its technology and operational reach further into South America and Brazil, where BinSentry has an exclusive distribution agreement with Cargill.

“We install a camera sensor at the top of the bin, it’s solar powered and has cellular connectivity and only takes 15 minutes to install, and we can start getting high accuracy inventory reports throughout the day,” Allen says. “That data goes directly into our software where we do a lot more than just inventory.”

Allen says the company uses the real-time bin monitoring data to run analytics mainly to inform the logistics side of the feed operation, and it can also send preventative maintenance alerts if it sees something happening inside the bin that could potentially be a problem. While not as inherently dangerous as climbing into large grain storage bins in the row crop world, manual monitoring is a laborious and risky task that would be better left to technology components if possible.

A BinSentry sensor on a poultry feed storage structure.

(BinSentry)

“We have been working with AI since the founding of the company, and we use it in a very tactical and operational way,” he explains. “Our consumption forecasts are always updating with our AI algorithms; it’s constantly adjusting to conditions like the biological variables of animals and the weather. We can really dial things in and get precise, so you can take better care of your animals, burn less diesel fuel, and then you need less workers.”

Besides Cargill, BinSentry is also working with Wayne Sanderson Farms, The Hanor Company, and Maple Leaf Foods. The company is moving at a breakneck pace, installing between 2,500 and 3,000 new sensors per 30 days, and it has its own service and maintenance teams to keep systems running and the customers happy.

“Our focus is to scale up now — because we’re growing like crazy,” Allen says. “That’s because we solve real, operational problems and we cut costs immediately. Our customer ROI is high and fast; the only way you grow this quickly (in agriculture) is by solving real problems for real people.

“We’re excited about our progress and excited about what we can do in the future, and that excitement centers around being more efficient within the animal feed supply chain, we feel like that’s a good story, because we’re helping create economic and environmental sustainability.”

You can read more about BinSentry’s funding raise here and learn more about the company at BinSentry.com.

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5 Labor Solutions from the World Pork Expo Trade Show

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 17:36:19 GMT

Labor is a limiting factor on many swine operations. Here are five solutions that stood out on the trade show floor at World Pork Expo to aid in:

sorting and loading pigs
biosecurity efforts
treating pigs using water-soluble medications
monitoring and measuring feed inventory
moving boars or dead stock safely

Sorting System Saves Time, Feed and Money
When was the last time your team looked forward to an easy loading day? It can typically take four or five people about two hours to sort and load a truckload of pigs. But with the automated sorter from Central Ag Distribution , that same truckload can be sorted in about 45 minutes by one person.

Jeffrey Morten, USA sales manager, says this automatic sorter weighs pigs every time they leave their group pen to go into the “food court.” The pig is weighed and the appropriate gate opens to let that pig into the pen with the correct diet for that group.

This keeps group weights consistent and helps notice lights more quickly. Instead of having to visually appraise pigs on sorting day, the pigs are already grouped by size. This helps with forecasting and shortens time needed in the barns to do so.

“It lessens anxiety all the way around — both for the people and the pigs. Loading just goes so much smoothly,” he says.

Downtime and Disinfection Tracking Helps Keep Logistics Moving
Biosecurity is critical to pigs’ health, but there are a lot of details to keep straight. Anthony Novero, chief technology officer at Farm Health Guardian, says if communication about disinfection isn’t clear for supplies entering the farm, then time and labor is wasted.

Farm Health Guardian is a management tool for farmers and food companies to improve biosecurity and disease prevention, saving time and reducing costs. It includes facial recognition technology that has two interlocked devices on either the incoming or outgoing door, depending on the state of the disinfection cycle. It shares the status of the cycle and lets employees know when it’s possible to move things out safely. It also helps monitor the room’s temperature.

Water-Soluble Medications Create a Ripple Effect of Efficiency
Water-delivered medications eliminate time spent preparing and giving injections and minimize stress to both the caretakers and the pigs because pigs don’t have to be handled individually, says Nic Lauterbach, Pharmgate Animal Health technical services veterinarian.

“The pigs stay calm, they keep drinking, eating and growing,” he adds.

These medications often have a small dose, so it’s possible for one caretaker to move the product, mix the medication and deliver it to the whole pen through the waterer.

Monitoring and Measuring Feed Inventory Saves on Labor
Feed is usually an operation’s biggest expense, and out-of-feed events happen far more often than you might think. Only 20% of all feed outages are caused by actually running out of feed. The remaining 80% of feed outages happen when there are issues with manual feed bin slides.

BinSentry provides a way to monitor and measure feed inventory and bin slide management using sensors and proprietary software to monitor bins in real time. It can create alerts to out-of-feed problems or issues about to occur.

“Asking farmers or techs to climb feed bins and visually estimate feed levels inside of bins is a safety risk and a poor use of time,” says Ben Allen, CEO of BinSentry. “Visual estimates of feed levels inside of dark bins are notoriously inaccurate. This type of work is perfect for sensors that can instantly and accurately report feed levels without wasting valuable human resources.”

Moving Boars or Dead Stock Can Be Made Easier and Safer
Hauling deceased pigs is no fun emotionally or physically. But the Trackporter provides physical relief.

“It can turn a two- to three-man job into a one-man job,” says Andrew Chandler, purchasing and inventory specialist for ATZ Manufacturing.

Hauling deceased pigs is no fun emotionally or physically. But the Trackporterprovides physical relief.

(Kasey Brown)

It can haul, push or carry dead stock. Chandler explains you hook up an animal and then push the button to move it. It was a low center of gravity to increase safety; can haul tools, heavy parts or supplies; and decreases the need of workman’s compensation claims.

For safety in moving boars, you can stand outside the crate and lead a boar where he needs to go.

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Self-Vaccinating Technology Could Reduce Labor, Improve Vaccine Compliance

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:03:27 GMT

An environmental enrichment (EE) device could be used to self-vaccinate pigs through natural behavior and reduce labor requirements. Researchers suggest this technology has the potential to improve vaccine compliance, biosecurity and overall animal welfare in commercial swine operations.

An EE device developed by John McGlone, professor at Texas Tech University; Rebecca Robbins, DVM, with PIC; Jessica Seate, DVM, with Animal Science Products, Inc.; and a team of students, allows pigs to self-administer liquids, such as vaccines, through pig rooting, investigating and natural play behaviors, the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) shared in a final report in the April SHIC newsletter.

Researchers measured efficacy of vaccine delivery and antibody response after self-vaccination compared to hand-vaccination for Lawsonia intracellularis (ileitis), Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (Mhp), influenza A virus (IAV) and Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae (erysipelas). Results show efficacy varies by pathogen, but researchers say erysipelas and ileitis vaccines show similar efficacy between self and hand-vaccination. Read more about how the study was conducted here.

How Effective is the EE Device?
Results for Mhp and IAV showed that self-vaccination with either antigen did not generate serum or oral fluid antibodies equivalent to the hand-vaccinated pigs, SHIC reports. When erysipelas vaccines were tested, self-administered pigs developed both oral and serum antibodies equal to those of hand-vaccination. Pigs that self-administered the ileitis vaccine developed only oral fluids antibodies.

“It was determined that some vaccines have similar efficacy between self-administration compared to labor-intense individual vaccinations,” the researchers note. “However, other vaccines did not readily induce antibody synthesis.”

Findings suggest that self-administration of killed vaccines, such as IAV and Mhp, may not be effective when delivered via the EE device.

“Inactivated vaccines typically rely on systemic immunity and often require adjuvants or higher doses to enhance efficacy,” the researchers explain. “These characteristics pose challenges for self-vaccination formats without precise dose controls.”

In contrast, live attenuated vaccines stimulate both systemic and mucosal immunity and can replicate locally at the administration site, making them more suitable for self-vaccination.

“Vaccine formulations or administration methods could be adapted to allow self-vaccination of select vaccines,” the researchers suggest. “Alternatively, an EE device may be modified to allow different methods of administration such as subcutaneous or intramuscular routes.”

How Can EE Devices Help Producers?
Using EE for self-vaccination of select vaccines has the ability to reduce labor requirements, eliminate the need for needles, provide benefits to animal welfare during immunization, and allow pen-level vaccinations or delivery of other animal health products, SHIC reports.

“Self-vaccination via an EE device not only reduces labor demands but also offers a less stressful and more enriching experience for pigs compared to traditional hand-vaccination methods,” the researchers say. “This approach has the potential to improve vaccine compliance, biosecurity and overall animal welfare in commercial swine operations using emerging technology being examined for application in the industry.”

This study was funded by the SHIC Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Research Program, in partnership with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and Pork Checkoff.

Find the industry summary for project #23-052 on this page.Read More: Needleless Vaccination: What’s the Impact on Pain and Stress in Pigs?

4 Things We Learned In 2024 to Be Better Pig Farmers in 2025

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 23:13:52 GMT

In a competitive industry like the U.S. pork business, it’s important to reflect and learn from your experiences. The experts featured each quarter in the State of the Pork Industry Report share four ways they grew from experiences they went through in 2024.

1. We’re in the people business.
One thing that Adam Annegers, sow production manager at JBS, is taking with him from lessons learned in 2024 is how to relate to people in the barn.

“We all have protocol books. Every company has them. You can read the protocol, ask a few questions and go out in the barn. But one thing we tried last year was an ‘extreme farrowing makeover.’”

For three weeks, Annegers and the production team worked side by side with the entire farrowing team. It was very structured and organized, playing people’s strengths against each other, he explains.

“Not everybody is great at everything, but we figured out who’s our really good monitor, who’s our really good day one person, who does really good with sow care and on down the line,” he says. “At first, it was kind of organized chaos. The farm staff was nervous that all these people were in the farm with them. The manager was really uptight and nervous. But by the third day, we were really able to teach that team how to be efficient and prioritize things. That really put the icing on the cupcake.”

Prior to the extreme farrowing makeover, that farm weaned 11.9 pigs per litter and just last week, they weaned 13.2.

“How we need to teach and approach our teams is different than the old Gen X guys that we are,” Annegers adds. “This made me look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘What can I do differently to help that next generation of the industry?”

2. Don’t make it complicated.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this question: what is the center of our industry?” says Pipestone veterinarian Cara Haden.

After reading through some National Pork Board data about pork consumption in the U.S., Haden admits she was a little discouraged. Boomers ate a lot of pork. Millennials eat much less. Generation Z eats half as much as millennials.

“In this recent downturn, we realized that no matter how low the pork prices go, that’s not necessarily going to drive pork purchasing from millennials and Gen Z,” Haden says. “As we move into 2025 as an industry and personally, I think we need to ask ourselves how we can help change the industry.”

Right now, the industry is very focused on production. Haden says it’s time to change that perspective to be more customer focused.

“What can we do to become relevant to millennials and Gen Z consumers? I got to sit in on a great presentation from Dr. Candace Croney from Purdue. One of the things she talked about is that the consumer wants to know the pig lived a good life. Don’t make it any more complicated than that. That’s going to be my focus this year – trying to centralize our industry around something other than production numbers. Let’s think about what the consumer wants and tell the story of pigs living a good life.”

3. Speed up and slow down.
Randy Kuker, director of swine production for The Equity, learned two contradictory messages in 2024: speed up and slow down.

“Speed up making decisions and communicating with key stakeholders within your company,” he says.

Last summer, they came across a health challenge in the barns. They manage pigs with different health statuses, so when problems arise, Kuker says it’s important to act quick.

“Switching that pellet to a meal to try to reduce the number of ulcers is important,” he explains. “We had that issue happen this summer, and we learned from that. We were quick on some and not as quick as we needed to be on some others.”

He learned the ‘slow down’ lesson when they transitioned a couple barns to a different producer.

“Our team was really happy with how healthy these pigs were from this producer,” Kuker says. “Even though there weren’t as many health issues (and shots) to deal with, there was still opportunity.”

Getting them to slow down and be more observant, looking for new things they haven’t looked for before, was key, he adds. In this case, Kuker taught them to slow down and keep an eye out for strep by looking for swollen joints.

“When you’ve got 165 pigs in a pen, you don’t have time to stop and look at every joint on every pig, but you need to look for different things than what you were looking for before,” he says. “If that pig isn’t moving away from you as you enter the pen and trying to escape, or if it’s not trying to move with the rest of the group and it’s lagging behind, that’s a pig you need to take a closer look at.”

4. The strong shall survive.
The past two years have been incredibly challenging for U.S. pork producers. Of all the lessons Brad Eckberg, account executive at MTech Systems, learned in 2024, this one stands out in his mind as he reflects on the challenges the industry has faced.

“If you’re sitting in a good position today, good job, especially coming out of 2024,” Eckberg says. “But we need to keep in mind there will be another downward cycle in the future. Unfortunately, it’s not if, but when will it happen? How will you withstand the next slide economically?”

He says producers need to keep adapting. Whether it’s pen gestation, antibiotic-free, Prop 12, just remember to consider all options to stay viable.

“We might not be a fan of some of these production practices, but there could be a financial benefit to it,” Eckberg says. “Maybe it’s time I build a mill or buy a feed mill, consolidate areas where I’m raising pigs or be more efficient from a medication usage standpoint. This industry has its ebbs and flows, and you need to prepare for it. Learn from your past experiences so that in the future you can avoid those bad mistakes and be better guided with those that were good.”

Watch or listen to their entire discussion ranging from PRRS and labor turnover to third-party Prop 12 audits and influenza on YouTube. These experts share their perspective on what’s been happening on farms in Q4 2024 and takeaways for producers to consider in 2025.

Catch up on past State of the Pork Industry Reports .

MetaFarms' Sow Platform Integrates with SwineTech’s PigFlow

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:43:44 GMT

MetaFarms integrated its industry-leading Sow platform with SwineTech’s PigFlow, a point-of-care-platform for pigs. The MetaFarms/SwineTech partnership, driven by customer demand, is the first of its kind, the companies say.

They point out that this collaboration addresses a key challenge in the swine industry by creating a seamless flow of information, unifying systems, and improving efficiency for everyone involved.

“Our customers have been looking for a more integrated solution to manage their sow farm data,” Brian Parker, MetaFarms chief operating officer and ag platform president, said in a elease. “The frustration of dealing with dual data entry and disconnected systems has been a common challenge. By partnering with SwineTech, we’re providing pork producers with a seamless solution that simplifies their operations, saves time, and enhances the way they manage their farms.”

How Does it Work?
The integration connects PigFlow’s point of care and workflow management capabilities with MetaFarms’ reporting and analytics. The companies say this will allow barn teams to have the tools to turn insights into action—streamlining workflows, improving task accuracy, and ensuring every pig receives the care it needs. This data is then transferred to the MetaFarms platform, providing a comprehensive and real-time view of sow performance and farm operations.

“MetaFarms is renowned for its expertise in records and data management systems, while SwineTech’s PigFlow stands out as a premier point-of-care solution for farm teams,” Matthew Rooda, co-founder and CEO of SwineTech, said in a release.

Parker believes this integration is a significant milestone for the swine industry.

“It demonstrates our commitment to customer success by addressing their pain points and providing a more efficient and effective solution for managing their sow farms,” Parker said in a release.

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Tariffs, Tech and Profitability: Midwest Pork Producers Weigh In

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:42:19 GMT

The fun part about being a pork producer is that there are so many things you have to keep your eye on, says Keith Schoettmer, a pork producer from Tipton, Ind.

“The landscape is continually changing. I wish at the end of every year of my nearly 50-year career, I would have written down the challenge of the year,” Schoettmer says. “But sometimes it’s nice to look ahead and anticipate some of the challenges.”

Tariffs and Trade in 2025
Tariffs came up over and over again in conversations with Schoettmer and other pork producers at the Midwest Pork Conference when asked what challenges they anticipate this year.

“We have an administration change that’s coming and talking some about tariffs. While sometimes we think we know what that means to our industry, I’m not sure we do,” Schoettmer says. “It’s going to be interesting to see how that unfolds.”

The U.S. is exporting close to 30% of all the pork produced, points out Mark Legan, a pork producer and grain farmer in Coatesville, Ind. Exports are vitally important to U.S. pork producers.

“We’ve already singled out Mexico, Canada and China, three of our four largest export markets, that additional tariffs are going to be slapped on,” Legan says. “That’s a concern going forward. If we do see the increase in tariffs and a corresponding decrease in pork that’s exported, it’s going to be tough. Because with any meat product, you can’t store it for too long. You either sell it or smell it.”

If exports drop, that puts a lot of product back on the domestic market, he adds.

“I guess the good thing is the pig numbers have been down compared to what USDA was projecting for this time of the year. And we keep hearing of sow farms going out. We’re getting production in line with what utilization could be in the future,” Legan says.

Take Advantage of Opportunity
Even with the concern about tariffs, pork exports have been on fire, he says. The U.S. Meat Export Federation continues to work to diversify markets throughout Central and South America as well as Southeast Asia, especially as Europeans decrease production due to added costs and regulatory pressure. Legan says it creates some real opportunities for U.S. pork producers.

“U.S. producers are committed to producing a quality product,” he says. “Look at Colombia, for example. They’ve doubled their domestic per capita consumption of pork just within the last 10 years, and that’s largely because of the quality and safety of U.S. pork. We’ve got a great story when it comes to sustainability and what we’re doing on our farms today, utilizing technology to produce more with less.”

Capitalizing on opportunities to improve efficiencies and capture better prices will be key for producers in 2025, Schoettmer says.

“Let’s make no mistake about it. The industry has had a rough time the last couple of years,” Schoettmer explains. “When we talk about enjoying the prospects of maybe having a good year, that’s just getting back to even for a lot of us. It may sound like an awful goal to get back to even, but it’s a realistic one in the story right now – to gain back some of the equity that we left on the table in 2023.”

Stay Vigilant
There is no question that profitability is always a worry for producers, says Jason Propst of Neoga, Ill. Although opportunities for profits in 2025 look good, animal health could always turn that fast.

“With winter here, it’s important to keep tabs on pig health,” Propst says. “Animal health has a tendency to have flare-ups during this time.”

The industry continues to wrestle with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, Legan says. With the reliance the U.S. has on export markets, he reminds producers to stay vigilant in keeping foreign animal diseases like African swine fever (ASF) out.

“Keep biosecurity in check all the time,” Schoettmer says. “Most herds do a very good job of watching their biosecurity not transmitting these viruses and bacteria from herd to herd. We need to be sure that we’ve taken every reasonable protection we can to ensure the safety of our animals from a pathogen that we may not be present or vice versa, as we might be near other animals that we don’t want to share anything with either.”

Don’t forget when animals are experiencing health challenges, it can also be more stressful on producers and caretakers.

“We’ve seen many producers go through a lot of struggles lately,” Propst says. “As we go forward, I just want to make sure that everybody is doing well and continues to be upbeat.”

Your Next Read: A Little Free Advice for Pork Producers in 2025

Farm Data Access for Your Veterinarian Can Aid Productivity

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 14:45:45 GMT

Being a veterinarian sounds like a straightforward role: Diagnose and treat animals. Our responsibilities, however, also include ongoing self-education and evaluation of herd health even when they’re not sick.

Much of my time is spent studying chronic health issues and other farm challenges to recommend solutions. I evaluate pigs at specific operations in order to make recommendations about maintaining health, preventing disease and helping the producer figure out how to change their inputs or environment to make the pigs more productive.

This is where data comes into play. Carefully collected and recorded data can assist a decision-maker — whether it’s the producer, their vet, nutritionist or a farm worker — in doing their job more efficiently. In addition to raising pigs, the swine industry is diligent about collecting data from operations and systems about everything from sow performance to marketing, weaning to nutrition, farrowing to grow-finish.

More data, more potential solutions
We know how important it is for producers to learn how to organize and read their silos of data or have someone who can assist with that. But producers and their on-farm employees aren’t the only ones who can benefit from the numbers, as data can invaluably aid veterinarians.

If you are a producer who works with CVS, your service may include a vet doing on-farm visits every four weeks to assess your swine population for health and productivity. On my visits, I want to see their living conditions and know their feeding and vaccination schedules and their rations, your biosecurity protocols and more. I’m only going to be on-site for a few hours, and I only have 13 of these opportunities a year to observe anything that may be helpful for pig health and production.

I will be able to provide some recommendations to help your operation. But if you want to really get the most from my time, providing access to particular data you’re collecting enhances my service. If I have access to pre-visit data for requested parts of your operation, I have a much better chance of spotting challenges and being able to look for opportunities to address those once I’m on-farm.

For instance, with access to your data platform, I may notice that there is an opportunity in your gilt heat detection process. When I am next at your farm, I can coordinate time to observe the daily heat detection instead of missing it while walking some other part of the farm. Without advance data, if the last place we end up is in the middle of that process and I only then realize the clue could be in how it’s being done, I won’t be back for four more weeks — and an opportunity for you to begin making effective changes is delayed a month.

You see blue, I see teal
Besides giving them time to objectively evaluate your farm’s data and formulate hypotheses and recommendations ahead of a site visit, another good reason to bring your vet into the loop is to let them be able to question how you are assessing and recording data in the first place, where applicable.

Mortality data is a good example for this. Data itself is objective — you weigh out five pounds of feed for each sow and record that; you administer vaccinations and record the animals and date; you dispose of dead pigs and note the animal (if tagged), date and cause of death. You or a farm worker may be able to readily observe some causes of death, such as prolapse or if a pig had been diagnosed with a specific illness, but you also probably have a number of “Unknowns” in your database.

These deaths concern you, but where you might not see a pattern and think it’s just the price of doing business, your vet might formulate specific questions based on the numbers, that you would not. In other words, I may interpret the same data differently than you do in some cases, or see a more nuanced “teal” where you see “blue.”

A vet might question why there are so many “Unknown” causes of death, and if there’s a way to lessen that uncertainty, such as training you or employees on necropsy or taking specific sample collections for postmortem analysis based on clinical signs of the carcass. Compared to 20 years ago, many farm workers now have the background and education to learn some basic necropsy techniques, which would better break down your data.

More daily value in data use
Producers, integrators and veterinarians have been collecting mountains of data for years from systems, processes and even written records, on everything from sow parity to litter size and feed cost to closeout. “What questions are we trying to answer?” is still a familiar rallying cry even as we slowly figure out how to sort and analyze so many numbers.

But there are immediate ways that information can help on the farm, provided you have the technology to record and access it in real time — I’m talking about employees being able to communicate more effectively, especially in a large operation, from hour to hour. Having a phone or tablet with access to an adequate download/upload data speed means you can video chat with your vet or nutritionist and transmit data from where the pigs are when you need those answers. It also comes in handy for something as simple as making the most of your employee’s time so that when he finishes one long task, he doesn’t have to find you in person to be assigned the next immediate task.

The two things still preventing this kind of data connectivity on many farms are hardware limitations and lack of broadband infrastructure. The good news is both are improving; more rural areas are being wired. And while biosecurity protocols still prohibit people carrying their personal phones into the barn to limit pathogens, keeping dedicated tablets in each area is a more realistic goal thanks to lower prices — if a tablet is dropped in a manure pit, it can be replaced for maybe $50 instead of costing hundreds.

Talk with your veterinarian about the possibility of sharing your operation’s data access with them, or even preparing specific reports to share for regular review if that is a more comfortable arrangement. A reputable vet will respect your data privacy and not share with outside parties, and this process may be the step you need to take the health and productivity of pigs to the next level!

Your Next Read: Volatility and a Little Luck: Will 2025 Set Producers on the Path to Profitability?

A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 18:24:44 GMT

With a visual form ripped straight from a skin-crawl inducing robot thriller, Tesla’s new AI-bot, Optimus, is eliciting strong reactions from tech advocates and flip-phone touting technophobes.

Let’s indulge our imaginations for just a second and imagine how a farmer could put one of Musk’s $20,000 helper robots to work around the family farm in, say, the year 2040. I use 2040 because, even though the prototypes in the video below look awesome, it turns out the AI behind it needs more work before any farmer would feel safe setting a squad of them loose on the farm.

Our own Clinton Griffiths was also inspired by Optimus’ unveiling. In his upcoming column in the November issue of Farm Journal, Clinton gets right to the heart of the issue, and that’s whether the bots will pan out on the farm?

The real test, he writes, “will be whether it can keep its glossy finish motoring along regardless of whether or not the field is mud-free.”

I couldn’t agree more, Clinton. Serving up fancy drinks during an unveiling party on a glitzy Hollywood film studio lot is one thing. Standing up to all the dust and heat and tough conditions of your average farm or ranch is a different beast altogether.

In that vein, we offer up the following farm chore list Optimus can take over from here on out.

No, seriously Opti, you don’t need our permission. Just go ahead and take care of these few little things every single day for the rest of time, and we’ll be off, I don’t know, fishing at the lake with the kids, rocking on the front porch, or something.

Farm equipment maintenance tech
Director of crop protection jug disposal
Backpack spraying around-the-clock weed warrior
Chief grain bin inspector
Head ladder climber
Irrigation pivot inspector general
Head high in July crop scout
Pig loader and unloader extraordinaire
Master bottle mixer and calf feeder

Now that you’ve read my list, I’m curious how you would use a robot that walks, talks and moves like a real human (and never gets tired, bored or spends 20 minutes staring at its phone) on your farm? or click

Share your robot wish list by clicking the green “Respond Here” button or click here .

Your Next Read: As the Wizard of Yield, Ken Ferrie Reveals His Secrets on Unscripted

Innovations Have Potential to Transform the Industry

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 12:00:00 GMT

Ultimately, technology can help pork producers make better decisions, but determining its cost-effectiveness is still the challenge.

Three speakers at the 2024 World Pork Expo see the benefits of new innovations and make a strong case during a session called, “The Future of Everything Pork.”

“If we can monitor animals throughout the day, then we can highlight when things are changing,” says Tammi Brown-Brandell. She works in precision animal management at the University of Nebraska. “We’re looking for that anomaly, and you really have to look at individual animals.

“Some animals spend more time than others at the feeder,” she continues. We look at gestation through finishing…and try to find those one or two things that it would be hard for the producer to notice. We look at lameness, grow-finish weight changes and well-being issues.”

For example, Brown-Brandell says with technology, her team can identify a drop in feed consumption about three days before an experienced caretaker notices it and gives producers a jump on potential issues. Low-frequency radio identification and depth cameras change the way researchers and eventually producers can look at animals.

DNA Technology

Dan Carlson, chief scientific officer at Recombinetics, says gene-editing technology can change an animal from being susceptible to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome to being resistant to the expensive disease.

“It would take years and years of breeding to do this on the farm,” says Carlson. “This is a fairly long process but there are several traits that have high impact. Animal health and disease traits are near the top but ultimately, we want to introduce traits that are good for consumers as well.”

Carlson says a researcher in Oregon is working to develop a pig with a short tail through DNA technology, but “the question is how much is it worth and will the industry pay for it?” That’s the overriding question on a lot of new innovations.

Biosecurity Implications

David Rosaro, assistant professor at Iowa State University, and other researchers are focusing on feed intake during the first two days after weaning to learn how a pig will thrive in the future. Security and new methods to enforce biosecurity are also high priorities. Knowing who enters a barn and when someone come onto a farm are important parameters to preventing disease. On the other hand, if disease has already entered the herd, tracking the growth or feeding habits of pigs can help identify it within a few days when it might normally take nearly a week, explains Rosaro.

“When we put new technology in barns we can look at new management strategies,” adds Brown-Brandell. “We can start evaluating the space that the pigs are in. We’ve installed active RFID sensors to track pigs around the pen and know when they’re using the cooling areas.”

Time and Money

Nearly all new technologies go through a process of research, development, use by early adopters, fine-tuning, value determination and industry acceptance. If the cost doesn’t justify the expected return, some of those technologies go by the wayside. But researchers are excited about the potential of the innovations they shared with producers. Before the decade is over, it’s likely the industry will be employing many of them.

Read More:

Biosecurity Breach Alerts: How a New Technology Could Fill Gaps on the Farm

John Phipps: The Truth About Artificial Intelligence

Biosecurity Breach Alerts: How a New Technology Could Fill Gaps on the Farm

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:12:36 GMT

Real-time feedback changes behavior. That’s why a new technology was launched at World Pork Expo to provide biosecurity breach alerts for trucks and trailers.

Ryan Strain, director of transportation and environmental at Pillen Family Farms, helped test this new Farm Health Guardian technology at their commercial system in Columbus, Neb.

“It’s an efficient way for the team to receive communication about the health status of different farms,” Strain says. “Everyone who needs to know is in the loop with this technology.”

Farm Health Guardian’s newest feature enables farm managers and veterinarians to verify biosecurity compliance and reduce the risk of disease spread between farms. Within a system, customers decide who gets notified, which properties are assigned to a particular rule, flow, or group, and which vehicles to include.

“The reality is, if you have a health issue arise, communication doesn’t need to be difficult,” Strain says. “The phone app allows team members to be informed immediately if they are in conflict of a protocol.”

He says it’s exciting to think about the ways tools like this can help prevent bigger challenges in the future. If a problem does arise, the app sends him an alert so he can coach his team through it.

“We have a lot of movement of animals, machinery and people in our system,” Strain adds. “Every day we make a plan that hopefully limits exposure. But what’s not in the script is how you get from A to B. Understanding that cross traffic is key. This helps put things in perspective.”

^{‘Rules’ for trucks and trailers can be configured so that specific vehicles are assigned to a property group, property flow or visit order, or even if a truck wash is required prior to a visit. Source: Farm Health Guardian}

Biosecurity breaches can cost a lot of money. Strain’s team is excited to utilize this technology, but he is quick to point out that there were some questions at first.

“Most of the questions that arose were around privacy,” he says. “Once they understand how the app works, people realize and understand how valuable it could be for our operation.”

Strain supports the environmental department which addresses everything from manure pumping, sewer jetting and varied external grounds maintenance. He says this team is very excited because they see great variation in the services requested of them and because of this, they encounter many biosecurity conflicts as it relates to work scheduling.

“Biosecurity isn’t a simple subject,” he adds. “Every day things change. We also rely on human interpretation. This helps eliminate varied responses to what’s happening in the health pyramid.”

Farm Health Guardian software can be linked to an existing truck GPS system. For livestock trailers or vehicles that aren’t equipped with GPS, FHG passport devices can be easily installed. ‘Rules’ for trucks and trailers can be configured so that specific vehicles are assigned to a property group, property flow or visit order, or even if a truck wash is required prior to a visit. The customer determines who will be notified if the rules are breached.

“Biosecurity breach alerts give our customers the ability to configure their own rules and get notifications if those requirements aren’t met,” says Kent Andersen, U.S. Business Development for Farm Health Guardian. “We know how busy our customers are and that they only want to know when their biosecurity protocols are breached, or to put it another way, ‘the dog should only bark when there’s a problem.’”

Read More:

Emerging Global Swine Disease Threats: Industry Actionables and Support

Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Program Tops SHIC Accomplishments in 2023

5 Steps to the Data Evolution Process

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 21:27:08 GMT

Brandon Osborn, with MetaFarms, can remember not that long ago when one of his high school teachers told him we’d never have hand-held computers. Now, nearly everyone carries a cell phone with capabilities far beyond what anyone would have imagined 20 years ago.

“Cell phone made our lives easier but the revolution is what it did to the human work force,” Osborn says. “Our source of information is right in our hand.”

That’s just one example of the evolution and revolution of technology. The pork industry is experiencing the same revolution, but obstacles still exist, Osborn says.

“A lot of trendy tech words are in conversations we’re having with clients on a day-to-day basis but there are steps that need to be taken to maximize the benefits of technology.”

1. Fundamentals: “Do we have a dataset that’s accessible and actionable?” Osborn asks.

2. Data: The data must be clean and trusted in terms of using it for effective algorithms.

3. Production Gateway: “We can only help with core solutions up to a point,” Osborn says. The gateway is key for ensuring we are connecting all disparate solutions and data throughout the industry.

4. Insights: Analytic solutions in the past have been expensive and hard to manipulate, Osborn says. “We need something in place that connects all the dots and provides a single source of truth.”

5. Predictive/automated analytics: Osborn says customers are asking every day for this tool, but all the fundamentals need to be in place for analytics to be truly effective, and it can get very expensive very quickly. “You’ll need a 360-degree view of your production,” Osborn says.

“We’ve done a good job of bringing our industry along and recording all the data we can…but it’s new to look at data in a way in which it hasn’t been used in the past, by making business decisions off the data.”

Osborn says data companies like his are working to tie it all together by looking at the trends and answer the difficult questions.

He encourages producers to make sure their data is clean and in an accessible form – that’s the first step.

“If you’re going to look at it later it needs to be easily accessible, all in the same place, and trusted,” he says.

A New Look at Tunnel Ventilation

Thu, 04 Mar 2021 20:26:57 GMT

A recent development designed to improve tunnel ventilation involves substituting variable speed fans for single-speed summer fans. These large variable speed fans utilize a different type of motor than the AC capacitor start motors normally used. Instead, they use ECM or Electronically Commutated Motors.

While relatively new to our industry, air-conditioning manufacturers have used ECM motors for about 20 years. ECM motors are brushless DC motors with a built-in inverter converting AC power to DC. Unlike AC motors, which become less efficient when they run at reduced speeds, an ECM motor is more efficient the slower it runs.

ECM motors are only about 10% more efficient at full speed or RPMs than the standard single-speed AC motors. For example, the Hog Slat 54-inch belt drive fan is rated at 18.6 cfm/watts, while the 54-inch Infinity fan powered with an ECM motor delivers 19.2 cfm/watts.

The real energy savings come when the Infinity fan runs at less than full RPMs. For example, two Infinity fans operating at 50% capacity produce the same CFM as a 54-inch single-speed fan but deliver it at a very efficient 36.1 cfm/watt.

To take advantage of this efficiency, staging a tunnel system with Infinity fans is somewhat different. Instead of powering on at full speed, the fan receives two signals from the house controller. One is an on/off signal turning the fan on, and the second is a voltage signal from 0 to 10 telling the fan how fast to run. When the house controller needs to increase airflow instead of increasing the first fan, it instead sends two signals to a second Infinity fan to come on at 50% capacity. This staging continues until all the Infinity fans are on operating at 50%. When the house controller calls for the next airflow increase, all the room fans increase to 75% and then 100%.

Last year we conducted a field test of a finishing site located in eastern North Carolina with a 101-foot wide by 236-foot long building divided into two 1200-head rooms. Each room contains a 36-inch fan and five 54-inch fans. The 54-inch fans in one room are single-speed belt drives, while the second room’s fans are Infinity fans. Separate electrical meters recorded power usage in each room. The room with Infinity fans used 6755-kilowatt hours less power throughout the 12-month test period.

Actual electric usage of any building will vary according to geographical location, fill dates, and target temperatures. Along with lower electrical use, direct-drive fans will reduce maintenance costs by eliminating the replacement of pulleys, belts, and drive shafts. Because the ECM motor generates less heat while running, we also expect it to last longer than a conventional motor.

Merck to Acquire Parent Company of Allflex, SCR

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:19:17 GMT

The owners of Allflex ear tags and SCR dairy monitoring technology is being acquired by Merck. The acquisition of the Antelliq Group, formerly known as the Allflex Group, was made public on Dec. 14 in a joint press release by Merck and Antelliq. Properties of Antelliq will be wholly owned and separately operated subsidiary within the Merck Animal Health Division.

Merck will make a cash payment of approximately $2.37 billion (2.1 billion euros) to purchase all of Antelliq’s outstanding shares. Merck will also assume Antelliq’s remaining debt which will be repaid after the acquisition closes.

Antelliq is a leader in the digital animal identification, traceability and monitoring solutions category with brands like Allflex and SCR. The company had $407 million (360 million euros) worth of sales for the 12 month period ending Sept. 30, 2018.

SCR was acquired by the Allflex Group through BC Partners in Dec. 2014. Then on Feb. 5, 2018, the group name was changed to Antelliq .

“Merck Animal Health is a leader in the animal health business and has delivered consistent above-market growth driven by a broad portfolio of innovative pharmaceuticals, vaccines and other value-added technologies and services. Antelliq’s people and products complement this portfolio by adding market-leading digital products, extending the range of solutions we can provide our customers and further driving the growth of our business,” says Kenneth C. Frazier, chairman and chief executive officer, Merck. “This acquisition is well aligned with our strategy to generate long-term growth and sustainable value for our customers and shareholders.”

The purchase of Antelliq is seen as helping complement Merck Animal Health’s already strong portfolio of vaccines and pharmaceuticals by getting into the digital traceability and identification market for animals.

“Merck has a strong and growing animal health business, and we are delighted that our superior offering of technology, products and services, as well as our global relationships, together with Merck, will bring additional value to our customers,” says Stefan Weiskopf, DVM, chief executive officer, Antelliq. “With more than 60 years of experience, we are constantly reimagining animal care to improve the quality of life for animals and for the people who care for them.”

“The animal health industry is rapidly evolving with revolutionary digital solutions to manage the health and well-being of livestock and companion animals,” says Rick DeLuca, president, Merck Animal Health. “Animal identification, animal monitoring and smart data management are critical components of this transformative technology. This acquisition represents yet another way that we will ensure our place as a leader in animal health, with a substantial and sustainable position, including the most innovative, technological solutions to serve our customers. Through our commitment to the Science of Healthier Animals™, we are dedicated to preserving and improving the health, well-being and performance of animals.”

Jean-Baptiste Wautier, chairman of Antelliq and partner at BC Partners says, “Antelliq is a unique business which played a pivotal role in driving forward the convergence of the animal intelligence and animal health industries globally. We are proud of the transformation of the company that we initiated together with a fantastic leadership team over the past five years and believe that Merck is an ideal partner for Antelliq to support the next stage of its growth. As a truly innovative market leader with a clear vision and dynamic team, Antelliq has significant potential to continue leading the industry, as the use of intelligence, data and technology play an increasingly important role in animal health and care.”

Prior to the transaction closing it will be subject to clearance by antitrust and competition law authorities and other customary closing conditions. The companies expect the deal to close by the second quarter of 2019. Merck was represented by Barclays and Centerview Partners and Antelliq was represented by Goldman Sachs International and Rothschild & Co.

How-To Video Shows Producers Best Practices For UV Boxes

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 03:37:25 GMT

When University of Minnesota researchers decided to study best practices in hog operations for the use of ultraviolet (UV) germicidal chambers—also called UV boxes—they made a surprising discovery.

Of the 48 operations they evaluated across the Midwest last year, only one was successfully eliminating E. coli on a controlled sample.

“What we found is that producers have this cool technology, but no one has an instruction manual on using it in real practical ways,” says Montserrat Torremorell, an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Torremorell notes that placing items in the box so they have direct exposure to the UV light is one of the most important things producers can do to ensure sanitation is achieved. Yet, not doing that is a common error.

“Producers will put their cell phone inside a plastic sandwich bag to keep it clean and then put it in the chamber, for instance. You wouldn’t think that would be an issue, but the light can’t penetrate the clear plastic,” Torremorell notes.

Along with that, Torremorell says producers need to clean their box regularly to ensure it works properly. “Even dust can keep it from properly sanitizing items,” she says.

“You also don’t want two items in the box to be touching or stacked,” she adds.

Katelyn Rieland, who worked on the project as a DVM student, developed the acronym “NO PRRS” to help producers remember the most important factors contributing to effective decontamination in a chamber:

New bulbs regularly
Organize routine cleanings of UV chamber
Place items in direct exposure to the UV chamber light
Rotate objects based on bulb placement
Reflective side walls
Safety first

Torremorell and her team have created a practical “how to” video (just over 2 minutes in length) to use the boxes effectively. Producers can view it here.

Potential Solution to Carcass Disposal during Disease Outbreaks

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 03:01:47 GMT

Iowa State University researchers have completed testing of a key component of a new concept for disposing of animal carcasses following a disease outbreak. The research someday may help producers facing animal disease emergencies, such as in 2015 when avian influenza resulted in disposal of millions of chickens and turkeys in Iowa and other states.

Jacek Koziel, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, said animal health emergencies occur around the globe each year due, not only to disease, but also to hurricanes, flooding, fire and blizzards. These incidents often require the disposal of numerous animal carcasses, usually accomplished via burial. In research published recently in the scientific journal Waste Management, Koziel and his team analyzed a method that could help livestock, poultry and egg producers deal more efficiently and safely with crises that lead to sudden increases in animal mortality.

Koziel and his team focused their research on improving on-farm burial, the method most commonly employed for large-scale carcass disposal due to its low cost and ability to quickly reduce the spread of airborne disease and foul odors. But emergency burial can contaminate nearby water resources with chemical and biological pollutants, and many locations in Iowa are considered unsuitable for such practices by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Buried carcasses also decay slowly, sometimes delaying use of burial sites for crop production and other uses for years, Koziel said.

To overcome these problems, the researchers studied a hybrid disposal concept conceived at the National Institute of Animal Science in South Korea following a massive outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2011. The method combines burial with aerobic digestion, a method commonly used for treating sewage in which air is pumped through the content to speed decomposition. The experiment also included burial trenches lined with flexible geomembranes like those used to prevent seepage from landfills and wastewater treatment ponds to protect water quality. The researchers then injected low levels of air into the bottom of the trench to accelerate carcass decomposition and treat the resulting liquid contaminants.

The experiment tested the performance of the aerobic component of the hybrid method in a lab using tanks containing whole chicken carcasses, water, and low levels of oxygen that occasionally dropped to zero as would be likely in emergency burial trenches.

Results of the study showed low levels of oxygen accelerated carcass decay significantly, reducing carcass mass by 95 percent within 13 weeks, while similar tests without air produced no noticeable decay. The air and water used for the experimental method create an ideal environment for bacteria to break down the carcasses quickly, a “shark tank,” as Koziel described it.

Chemical contamination in the liquid waste met U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criteria for safe discharge to surface waters. The hybrid method also eliminated two common poultry pathogens, salmonella and staphylococcus. Aeration also reduced odorous gases sometimes associated with mass burial.

Koziel said the encouraging laboratory results could pave the way for follow-up field studies that will include evaluation of alternative geomembrane liners, aeration system designs and components, and performance testing of the complete hybrid disposal system.

The research was supported by funding from the Korean Rural Development Administration.