On a pig farm, there is currently still a lot of scope for optimisation. A sow farmer selects sows and boars based on fertility and other farrowing house parameters, but almost not on growth and offspring quality. In the mating and farrowing house, relevant parameters can still be tracked at sow level. For piglets and fattening pigs, individual animal monitoring was impossible until recently.
Thus, all data on performance, vaccination and medication use, defects and animal diseases were lost for the individual pig. Moreover, there was no link between the pig on the farm and the carcass at the slaughterhouse. As a result, a lot of valuable information is lost and hidden costs and opportunities remain unexploited. Technically, however, the possibilities are currently there to track pigs from birth to slaughter. Since 2021, the first slaughterhouse in Belgium will offer the possibility of linking individual carcass data to an electronic ear tag. Electronic ear tags are also in application stage for approval as Sanitel identification.
However, the pig farmer needs insights into how to track individual pigs, what data to collect and then what the added value of that is. Indeed, this data offers a multitude of possibilities and applications. By linking the performance of offspring and parents, efficiency improvements can be made much more concrete on the individual farm.
Moreover, by examining individual animal data, insights can be generated that are widely applicable across the sector. The data collected provide many options for benchmarking and monitoring new key figures, and will be a catalyst for far-reaching improvements for sustainable pig production.
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