ForFarmers and Nedap to open up individual pig data

ForFarmers and Nedap will combine their unique nutritional and precision farm technology and expertise in a project that will take historic and real time individual animal production data from on-farm systems to generate management information enabling automatic individual sow feeding throughout the entire life cycle of the animal.

Whilst individual electronic sow feeding (ESF) technology for sows in the gestation period has existed for a number of years this new project will for the first time combine this approach with the more recent move toward automatic feeding of lactating sows in the farrowing period.

In the project ForFarmers and Nedap will combine their expertise aimed at increasing the use of existing and new data in order to improve feed performance, reduce illness, increase sow longevity and grow healthier animals.

The joint project will be tested for a year on a ForFarmers test farm in the Netherlands. The data from a 700 sow farm will be combined with the existing data in the Nedap Farrow Feeding and Electronic Sow Feeding system. The combined data will enable the technicians of ForFarmers to further improve the composition of the feeds and the optimal way to feed sows. 

Nedap and ForFarmers have both dedicated themselves to this projects with R&D capacity and expect first results to be available in early 2017.