Farmer Focus: Weaner house sensor upgrade improves monitoring
© MAG/Colin Miller I hope everyone is well. It continues to be very warm here in Essex, with winter barley really moving on quickly.
A few more weeks like this and I think we’ll be harvesting some in the second or third week of July.
See also:Â How collecting weight data helps improve pig unit efficiency
About the author
While on the topic of the heat, we are having a more advanced monitoring system put in for all our weaner accommodation.
Previously, we had an alarm system with all programming and temperatures displayed on the control panel attached to the building, and power failure notification on my phone.
There is nothing wrong with that system – unless you want to look back at temperatures for a particular batch of pigs or check live temperatures from afar.
This was something I discussed with Matt at MVG Electrical, who is great at sorting anything electrical on the farm for us, including introducing new technology.
He did some further research and found a system called iMonnit.
We are trialling our first two sensors and all is working well so far, with upper and lower temperature limits being notified when reached during testing.
I think further value could be added by introducing sensors for other key environmental factors such as air quality and lighting to the same monitoring platform.
If the monitoring can be constant, rather than routine checks, we can determine high and low points and measure the fluctuations.
Even better would be using that data and getting the sensor to become the tool that fixes the issue.
So a sensor that could recognise when the light level was not where we wanted it at a given time of day would also trigger the lighting to be restored to the correct level of intensity.
I’ve seen research on the effects of light intensity and timing on factors such as feed intake, feed conversion ratio and breeding productivity and, while limited, it does show potential.
For example, a longer lighting period during the first two to three weeks of lactation seemed to help stimulate suckling.
And newly weaned pigs given a longer lighting period for the first 24 hours after weaning tended to settle quicker, with more visits to the feeders and higher intakes recorded.
I have tried adjusting the lighting intensity on my laptop screen later in the day, and it’s certainly increasing my need for a beer!