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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
ELECTRONIC SOWFEEDING (ESF) CONSIDERATIONS
Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Production by admin on May 11, 2017
We have identified several opportunities associated with the implementation of electronic sow feeding for the improvement of sow herd nutrition and management. This includes improved feed utilization by the reduction of feed needed to maintain individual animal body condition, better matching of feed delivered to changing nutritional needs of sow during gestation through the use of software controlled feeding curves, automated control of gilt estrus via the delivery of Matrix to selected individual animals feeding in the ESF station, and a practical
solution to regulating the amount and timing of a feedback program in pen gestation to stimulate immunization against autogenous pathogens. The electronic identification of the sows via an RFID tag also opens the door for additional digital management of the herd such as spray marking of animals requiring vaccination or selection of animals to move to farrowing. However, these advantages of ESF cannot be captured without some forethought on how the barn will be staffed, how these people will be trained, and gilts will enter the herd both at start-up and for the rest of the life of the ESF facility.