Sow farmers who successfully want to produce piglets always have to have an excellent overview of the production and performance data of their animals. Therefore, mobile computers or tablet PCs in sow management have long ago become universal companions for them. However, their application usually is significantly handicapped by too small displays and keyboards, bad lighting conditions, dust and dirt. The remedy for this is QuigTag, an entirely new Big Dutchman software allowing safe and quick entries.
Franz-Josef Butschen has personally convinced himself of this, since the sow manager from Viersen in the Lower Rhine (Germany) area now uses the rapid management aid in the service centre and the farrowing house on his farm – and now greatly appreciates the ease of work resulting from the simplified data input. The procedure is based upon informative symbol cards called site and function cards with very easy handling:
Automatic navigation on a sow farm
Reduced workload in sow management thanks to QuigTag
- For example in the service centre: The farmer has added site cards with the registered data of the respective sow to every crate. He is carrying the function card for insemination with him.
- The mobile device is held in direction of the site symbol with the transponder reader put-on – as an alternative the ear tags of the animals can be read out – and afterwards towards the function symbol. The computer automatically navigates to the desired software point which is directly displayed with the respective sow number. It is no longer necessary to click through manually which can be rather time-consuming.
- Equally easy is data acquisition with QuigTag in the farrowing house: After farmer Butschen has scanned site and function cards, the mobile device navigates to the correct sow number. Now he can easily enter all relevant farrowing data, inconvenient scrolling the sow lists is no longer necessary.
- For pregnant sows, the Butschen family selected the Big Dutchman ESF system Callmatic Pro for sows in group management. This can ideally be combined with QuigTag and Callmatic Pro: Upon importing data from the ear tags all relevant data regarding the sow are available, feed curves can be modified and selection orders can be given.
- Generally, everything is cross-linked and available in real time: Since QuigTag is part of the BigFarmNet technology; all data entered in mobile devices will automatically be aligned and shared with all other computers.
