With RFID, Pork Producer Sells No Swine Before Its Time

The BOSwine software, which resides on the farm's back-end server, stores the tag's unique ID number, as well as other data related to the piglet, such as the ID numbers of its parents' tag ID numbers, the date and time of its birth, and its birth weight. After that, the software displays an alert if the RFID tag is not scanned at least once every five days as it receives some kind of treatment, Daskal says, thereby ensuring piglets do not fall through the cracks and miss necessary procedures.

Each pig then goes through a lifecycle of receiving procedures, such as vaccinations, insemination, pregnancy care, birthing, weaning and re-insemination. A healthy lactating sow, which has had the proper vaccinations—including one against flu viruses such as H1N1—will pass those antibodies on to her piglets during the 30-day period in which she nurses her newest litter.

The day before procedures are scheduled, farm employees can print a report from the BOS software indicating which pigs are due for which procedure. Those reports are made available to the farm's veterinarians and other workers, who can then prepare an area in advance—by knowing, for example, how many vaccines will be administered the following day, the number of pigs that will be inseminated, or the number of sows due to give birth.

As each pig receives its appropriate service, its tag is read with a stick reader that has a read range of approximately 60 centimeters (24 inches), which transmits wirelessly to a laptop computer that sends data to the BOS software server. The server confirms that the proper pig is receiving the correct service, and stores information regarding that procedure on that particular date. If the pig should not be receiving that service, or if another animal fails to receive the procedure for which it was scheduled, an "irregularity alert" can be sent to the software users, as well as to the staff using the readers, on the display of the laptop or the handheld reader.

According to Lazimi, the farm has tagged all of its sows and continues to tag the appropriate piglets. To date, he says, the system has reduced the piglet mortality rate from 25 percent to 18 percent, and that rate is still dropping. It has accomplished this by ensuring that each mother sow has received the proper health care prior to delivery, and that she is delivering healthy piglets she can feed with antibody-rich milk. The system has also shown its ability to increase the sows' productivity, by ensuring that a mother pig is separated from her piglets as soon as they are weanable, and is inseminated once she is deemed ready. In the future, Lazimi says, the farm also plans to provide genetics information regarding which mother-father pairings are producing the largest, healthiest litters.

"It's providing an amazing solution," Lazimi says, noting that BOSwine provides access to more detailed information regarding each pig's life, health and productivity. The farm expects to see a return on its investment within less than a year, based on the sows' increased productivity and the piglets' improved health.