Substantial advancement in pig production in recent decades has led to improvement in productivity, allowing farms to be operated at large scale. Yet, following this development is a public and societal concern about animal welfare.
FITPIG addresses this issue by monitoring the pigs’ health and production process through IoT sensors. By using IoT sensors that measure the animals’ physiological parameters, the farmer is able to monitor the health of the animals and to quickly intervene in case health risks or diseases occur. The collected data can further be utilised to assess production management and support decision-making.
The overall aim of FITPIG is to improve animal welfare and sustainability of livestock production. More specific goals include using physiological parameters such as resting heart rate and activity of the animal to determine health state and the farrowing, reducing the economic risk for farmers and decrease the use of preventive medication (e.g. antibiotics). Moreover, FITPIG is expected to generate results such as earlier detection of health issues and a reduction in sick piglets and animal mortality.
“The purpose of FITPIG is to help the farmer to get useful and simple information for decision support. This includes health alerts and indications of the start and duration of farrowing. We think the farmer will feel safer with this, instead of guessing and instead use the time and efforts on the animals that really need assistance or treatments.“ says Anders Herlin, researcher involved in FITPIG.
The use case is part of Internet of Food and Farm 2020 (IoF2020), that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. FITPIG involves partners from HOP Ubiquitous (HOPU), the Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Digitanimal SL.
Contact:
Oleksiy “Alex” Guzhva
oleksiy.guzhva@slu.se
+46703869577