Carefully collected and recorded data can assist a farm’s decision-maker in their job, whether it’s aiding the producer in making a major decision about their herd, or helping their vet, nutritionist or workers make a determination about a specific animal or pig flow.

In addition to raising pigs, the swine industry is diligent about collecting data from operations and systems about everything from sow performance to marketing, weaning to nutrition, farrowing to grow-finish. Where a number of producers haven’t been as aware in recent years is in recognizing the talent that may be on their own farm, and how that can strengthen aspects of their data collection for analysis.

Mortality data is a good example. Data is objective numbers — you weigh out five pounds of feed for each sow and record that; you administer vaccinations and record the animals and date; you dispose of dead pigs and note the animal (if tagged), date and cause of death. You or a farm worker may be able to readily observe some causes of death, such as prolapse or if a pig had been diagnosed with a specific illness, but you probably also have a number of “unknowns” in your database.

These deaths of course concern you, but you probably cannot afford a necropsy on every “unknown,” nor does your local veterinarian have the time. The solution might be on your team already — one or more could learn to perform basic necropsy, collect fluids or otherwise do postmortem analysis of carcasses to help determine likely causes of death.

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From my own contact with the employees Carthage Veterinary Service hires for its managed farms, including those it onboards through international visa programs, I know that right now we have the most educated on-farm workforce in the swine industry. It’s not just those we hire through the federal TN visa — which is specifically for people licensed or degreed in their specialized field — there are also other hires who have solid backgrounds and education in swine health.

It would be wise for a producer to assess their workforce, take advantage of such talents and give those employees the training and latitude to allow them to gather more informed data to assist both their own farm and the industry as a whole. A lot of our technology on the farm is focused on replacing labor-intensive, repetitive tasks with automation — this can also free up knowledgeable workers to focus on specialized jobs.

Data for veterinarians, too

Another way to both improve your operation’s data and let it better inform decisions about your pigs is to put some of said data into the hands of your veterinarian. If their job includes advising you on health and breeding issues, data is another valuable puzzle piece to them being able to build a holistic picture of productivity.

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If you are a producer who works with CVS, for instance, your service may include a vet doing on-farm visits every four weeks to assess your animals. On my visits, I want to see the pigs’ living conditions and know their feeding and vaccination schedules and their rations, your biosecurity protocols and more. I’m only going to be there for a few hours, and I only have 13 opportunities a year to observe anything that may be helpful for pig health and production.

Chances are that from a visit alone, I’ll be able to provide recommendations to help your operation. But if you want to get the most from my time, providing access to particular data you’re collecting enhances my abilities. If I have access to pre-visit data for requested parts of your operation, I have a much better chance of spotting challenges and being able to look for opportunities to address those once I am on-farm.

Here’s one way it can work: With access to your data platform, I may want to observe your gilt heat detection process. When I am next at your farm, I can schedule time to observe the daily heat detection instead of missing it while walking some other part of the farm. Without that advance data, if the last place we end up is in the middle of that process and only then do I realize the clue could be in how heat detection is being carried out, I won’t be back for four more weeks — and your opportunity to begin trying effective changes is delayed a month.

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Your data not only gives me insight into your operation, it allows me to sketch out my best schedule for focusing on the parts that should matter most to you. Talk with your veterinarian about the possibility of sharing your operation’s data access with them, or even just preparing specific reports to email them for regular review if that is a more comfortable arrangement.

Putting data to work daily

When it comes to data, “What questions am I trying to answer?” is a familiar rallying cry of swine producers who collect a mountain of numbers but don’t quite understand how to use all of them.

There are, however, immediate ways some information is useful on the farm right away, provided you have the technology to log and access it in real time. Having a phone or tablet with access to adequate download/upload data speed means you and employees can communicate more effectively with each other, especially in a large operation. These can also be used to video-chat with your vet or nutritionist and transmit data from where the pigs are, when you need those answers.

It also comes in handy for something as mundane as making the most of an employee’s time so that when he finishes one long task, he doesn’t have to come find you or the manager in person to be assigned the next necessary task.

The two main things preventing this kind of data connectivity on many farms are hardware limitations and lack of broadband access. Fortunately, both are improving — more rural areas are being wired thanks to availability of funding and interest of investors, as well as the recognition of internet access being as critical to daily life as electricity. And although biosecurity protocols still prevent people from carrying their personal mobile devices into the barn, keeping dedicated tablets in each area is more realistic now thanks to lower prices — a tablet dropped into a manure pit can be replaced for maybe $50 instead of costing hundreds.