The impo
rtance of accurately weighing your pigs is obvious: overweight or underweight animals cost you money at market, with bonuses being lost or penalties being fixed for undesired-weight pigs. However good you or your staff is at guessing pig weight, you can never be sure of the weight of each individual animal without a good scale.
Having the labor needed to correctly weigh animals used to be a major cost concern to the animal-rearing professional. For example, with an individual pen-type of barn, each pen must be checked for adequacy of feed, water, and nutritional supplements. The worker needs to be trained to sort the pigs, placing different pigs in different pens for the administration of the correctly balanced diet: whether for weight gain or loss. It is an time-consuming process that is a skill learned over years, and is sadly often inaccurate. These inaccuracies add to sheer man-hours spent in sorting, and at market, with substantially different prices paid for the ideally-weighed and raised pig.
Labor needed to check the hogs that meet market weight can itself be time-consuming and costly in terms of man-hours. Chasing whole pens of pigs down an alleyway and then onto a scale, hand-separating each pig, and sending the heavier ones to the truck for market, and the lighter ones back to the feedpens…It all cuts down on your bottom line profit margin.
Pig sorters and scales are an obvious, attractive solution to the labor costs you might have once incurred. They also greatly alleviate the time spent yourself doing the work. Sorters and scales are designed to send the pigs to an individual enclosure, a gate closing behind a single pig at a time. There is minimal training required to keep the pigs moving through the system in an orderly manner. The pig’s weight is recorded, and the animal is sent to from one to five different feedlots (depending on your personal customization), depending on the animal’s feeding needs. If the pig is underweight, nutritionally-enhanced feed in the specific lot will help bring its weight up. If its overweight, it gets less food, at lower calories. If it’s doing just fine, it gets its normal feed.
Fewer hours and fewer personnel are needed to get the job done with automatic sorters and scales. No one needs to be trained to visually sort the pigs and then do the work, because the sorter does that for them. No one needs to be trained to select the correct feed for different animals’ needs, because the feedlots are filled with the required food beforehand, based on how they are going to be sorted.
Information comes to you via a display screen or through saving it on a memory stick to be viewed on your off-time, easing the requirement that you stand in the barn and do the visual work. Or the data may be wired directly to a computer or the Internet. This cuts down on your own overhead, allowing you the freedom to do your budgeting and planning in a more comfortable environment, freed from the pressures of being a human resources manager, too.
Automatic Pig Scales Reduce Barn Labor
The impo
rtance of accurately weighing your pigs is obvious: overweight or underweight animals cost you money at market, with bonuses being lost or penalties being fixed for undesired-weight pigs. However good you or your staff is at guessing pig weight, you can never be sure of the weight of each individual animal without a good scale.
Having the labor needed to correctly weigh animals used to be a major cost concern to the animal-rearing professional. For example, with an individual pen-type of barn, each pen must be checked for adequacy of feed, water, and nutritional supplements. The worker needs to be trained to sort the pigs, placing different pigs in different pens for the administration of the correctly balanced diet: whether for weight gain or loss. It is an time-consuming process that is a skill learned over years, and is sadly often inaccurate. These inaccuracies add to sheer man-hours spent in sorting, and at market, with substantially different prices paid for the ideally-weighed and raised pig.
Labor needed to check the hogs that meet market weight can itself be time-consuming and costly in terms of man-hours. Chasing whole pens of pigs down an alleyway and then onto a scale, hand-separating each pig, and sending the heavier ones to the truck for market, and the lighter ones back to the feedpens…It all cuts down on your bottom line profit margin.
Pig sorters and scales are an obvious, attractive solution to the labor costs you might have once incurred. They also greatly alleviate the time spent yourself doing the work. Sorters and scales are designed to send the pigs to an individual enclosure, a gate closing behind a single pig at a time. There is minimal training required to keep the pigs moving through the system in an orderly manner. The pig’s weight is recorded, and the animal is sent to from one to five different feedlots (depending on your personal customization), depending on the animal’s feeding needs. If the pig is underweight, nutritionally-enhanced feed in the specific lot will help bring its weight up. If its overweight, it gets less food, at lower calories. If it’s doing just fine, it gets its normal feed.
Fewer hours and fewer personnel are needed to get the job done with automatic sorters and scales. No one needs to be trained to visually sort the pigs and then do the work, because the sorter does that for them. No one needs to be trained to select the correct feed for different animals’ needs, because the feedlots are filled with the required food beforehand, based on how they are going to be sorted.
Information comes to you via a display screen or through saving it on a memory stick to be viewed on your off-time, easing the requirement that you stand in the barn and do the visual work. Or the data may be wired directly to a computer or the Internet. This cuts down on your own overhead, allowing you the freedom to do your budgeting and planning in a more comfortable environment, freed from the pressures of being a human resources manager, too.