MANAGEMENT ▶▶▶
Enhancing pig herd health in a dash
Aimed at sharing best practices and innovations in swine production, the EU PiG Innovation Group presents ambassadors whose innovations stand out. In this episode: Use of slaughter data to develop a dashboard system.
BY NATALIE BERKHOUT, CORRESPONDENT
The ambassador Patrick Ryan, a farmer who runs a 1,000-sow farrow-to-finish farm in Ireland. He was among the first farmers to use the sys- tem and achieved promising results.
Feedback from the slaughter- house is essen- tial in the dash- board programme.
The innovation Data from different areas of pig farms (biosecurity, vaccine and antimicrobial use, nutritional practices, health and wel- fare status in farm and productive performance) have been integrated into a dashboard-like system. That system allows farmers to identify weak areas in their farms, and to make in- formed decisions for improvement. The main component of the system is the slaughterhouse feedback. Research done by the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Tea- gasc) has shown that the main factor affecting performance of Irish pig farms is their health status as recorded at the slaughterhouse and by serology. With this system, farmers can set targets to reduce the effects of disease and select the best approach for interventions by analysing their biosecurity practices, vaccination programmes or other areas.
The idea Teagasc, in discussions with farmers, observed that farmers found it difficult to understand and use some of the data pro- vided by other areas of the pig production chain. The data had to be presented in a more user-friendly format, allowing for benchmarking, and had to provide farmers with the infor- mation they needed to improve their farms. Thus, the dash- board was developed with and for the farmers. For farmers, using the records of their farms for decision-mak- ing is very important. Based on the analysis of their data, farmers can set targets for improvement and implement ac- tions that help achieve those targets. However, if farmers can compare their farms with the farms of their peers (bench- marking) this is an extra step that results in faster improve- ment. Using dashboards and visualisations of the data to help farmers make management decisions is becoming more common, increasingly in areas such as slaughter data, where significant benefits to productivity, health and welfare can be made through better use of data.
Advantages • The system takes advantage of existing information; •
• •
It allows easy benchmarking between farms; It allows monitoring progress over time;
• The system is easy to understand for farmers, vets and advi- sors;
• Data can be further analysed by the advisor/veterinarian; •
Information is presented simply in a clear and interactive way.
Costs The programme has been created for Irish farmers and is paid by the Irish Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine (DAFM) and by the levy that pig farmers pay for each pig pro- duced. It is therefore available to all Irish farmers at no addi- tional cost.
What is next? The system has been developed with a cohort (20%) of farm- ers in Ireland. The plan is to continually improve the system and to expand it to all Irish farmers.
12 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 8, 2020
It summarises all the information available for a farm in the same format in a single dashboard;
PHOTO: NIENKE VAN STAVEREN
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