By Bruce Cochrane
A Canadian company has introduced Canada's first all stainless steel electronic sow feeding system.
Last week, as part of World Pork Expo 2014 in Des Moines, Canarm Ag Systems introduced Canada's first stainless steel electronic sow feeding system.
Canarm swine products manager Curtiss Littlejohn says one of the major drivers is changes coming in Canada's Pig Code under which the Canadian industry will be moving away from gestation stalls toward alternative housing.
Curtiss Littlejohn-Canarm Ag Systems:
The system, we like to think of it that it has three basic components.
One is the structural unit itself that allows the sows in and houses the sows and that structural unit, right down to the nuts, bolts and springs, is all constructed of 304 grade stainless.
That's the stainless that hog producers have been using in barns for 10 or 20 years now.
It just does not deteriorate and stands up to the rigours of the environment.
The second part of the system is the automation software and the automation software is the piece that drives the unit.
It makes the actuators work, it moves the feed bowl, it opens and closes the gates, it puts the water in, it puts the feed in.
We've had that automation software and the processes and the components all designed in Canada built with Canadian components that you can find at any local reasonably sized industrial or electronics supplier.
The third part of the system is the software that manages all the data that the system is capable of collecting.
For that we've chosen to partner with PigCHAMP who is the world's leader in swine management software.
The reason for that is there is a lot of tools and a lot management decisions that need to have all of those inputs interconnected.
It just seems to be a bit of a stretch that we have a new piece of equipment on the farm that can't talk to the piece of software that we are basing most of our management and production decisions on.
Source: Farmscape