The Lower Saxony animal house outfitter WEDA Dammann & Westerkamp has unveiled Smart.Light solution with an aim to render animal control easy and efficient for the house staff
According to the company, with the help of this innovation, the status of feed intake of the individual animals or pens is indicated directly at each valve in the house.
The work in pig houses is varied, time-consuming and demanding. During the daily animal control, numerous factors must be paid attention to identify potential illnesses in a timely manner. Important indicators to assess animal health are, for example, water and feed consumption. Based on the consumed amounts, the house staff can recognise early on whether an animal is sick.
Immediate animal control possible
The Smart.Light aims to ease and speed up animal control in the compartment. Due to the LED lamp, which is visible from a distance and displays different colours, animals with deviating feeding behaviour can be identified immediately. This way, the daily animal control gets optimised and animals that have fallen ill can be treated significantly sooner than in the past.
Towards a comprehensible functions
The Smart.Light consists of an LED lamp to display messages in the house directly by the animal or in the pen. For instance, if the pigs have consumed their feed quantity according to the feed curve, the lamp is off. If approximately 80 per cent of the typical feed quantity was consumed, the Smart.Light turns yellow.
In this case, the animals can be checked and the trough or sensor can be cleaned as necessary. If the feed quantity consumed is below 80 per cent of the feed curve, the Smart.Light turns red. The house staff can then act immediately.
Settable thresholds
The Smart.Light is controlled by the WEDA feeding software Excellent 4PX. On a dedicated page in the programme, the feeding data is recorded and evaluated over the course of several days.
The Smart.Light can be installed next to the feed valve on a WEDA liquid feeding system, next to the valve on a Nutrix suckling piglet feeding system or next to the OptiMum doser. Existing installations can be retrofitted.
