The biennial EuroTier trade fair held in Hannover Germany is the world’s leading trade fair for animal production, focusing on pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, horses, poultry, fish farming and also bioenergy. It will take place Nov 15 – 18, 2016 and is held at the huge Hannover “Messe” showground, with buses being provided for visitors to get around the site — plus comfy footwear is essential. New companies are still keen to exhibit, and this year’s event will see 2,600 companies exhibiting their products, which is an increase of 200 over the 2014 show. As well as trade exhibits DLG (the German Agricultural Society) are putting on a feature, “The future of pig finishing” which amongst various topics will look at alternatives to castration without anaesthesia. A pig forum will also feature short presentations on topical issues. The International Centre is an ideal place for overseas visitors to meet up, chat and take a well-earned rest.
DLG appoints an independent panel of experts who select the winners of the EuroTier Innovation awards. In a new development, DLG announced the winners before the show at the EuroTier preview event held in Gottingen Sept 21-22. Twenty five product innovations across all species have been awarded gold or silver, from 251 applicants, although companies will not know the colour of their medal until the show opens.
Big Dutchman is a huge company operating worldwide. Being a major German company it is honour-bound to present new innovations at EuroTier and the Culinaflex concept has won the company a medal. Our geneticists have bred “Super Sows” that can crank out huge litters but unfortunately not improved the sow’s ability to feed them all successfully. Hence we now have a number of feed lines on the market which provide supplemental milk for piglets. Big Dutchman, in cooperation with Culina, has made modifications to this milk line system. The system now has small bowls instead of cups. Meticulous hygiene is vital for these systems and so air is removed from the line after feeding cycles, giving anaerobic conditions which inhibit bacterial growth and contamination. Big Dutchman also announced other new innovations at the Preview event. Checking heats in gilts is a time consuming job and often an issue on farms. Big Dutchman, in conjunction with Giessen University, has developed a computer program, Estrus Control, which automatically evaluates data collected by its heat detector unit and calculates reliable information on gilts’ heat cycles and very importantly calculates the date of the next heat.
In Germany and Holland manure has often to be shipped a long way to be spread, incurring haulage costs. The OptiSec manure drying system reduces the liquid content of manure, giving a product which can be 85 per cent DM and hence more concentrated, as pellets, reducing the quantities to be hauled off the farm. Liquid feeding pipelines are very difficult to keep clean. Biofilm can build up in the pipes and where harmful pathogens can multiply. Sonic Clean uses ultrasonic waves which are transmitted round the clock and reduces the bacterial count from 26 million to only 180,000.
Ensuring finishing pigs are the correct weight for slaughter is vital to maximize returns and eliminate cost penalties for shipping underweight/overweight pigs to the slaughter house.
Weighing pigs is a tedious job and eyeballing hogs needs a very good eye to get the weights spot on. German company Meier- Brakenberg has come up with an ideal – 
and medal winning – solution, PiggyCheck. This is novel artificial intelligence – based software that uses a handheld 3D camera to scan the pig, creating a 3D image of the pig and its weight. The software, which can run on conventional smartphones or tablets with 3D cameras, provides marketing information in the form of a traffic lights display. After slaughter data can then be combined to produce killing out percentages, etc. Certainly PiggyCheck is worthy of a gold medal, for sure! Meier- Brakenburg won a gold medal in 2014 with their self-propelled carcass trolley, Porky’s Pick Up. This trolley could not handle dead sows and so it was logical to bring out a bigger version as dead sows are extremely hard to move, often being stuck in farrowing crates or gestation stalls. Porky’s Pick Up XL will handle carcases up to 300kg and requires only a single person to operate it. It costs €4490.
Schauer are a very well-known equipment company headquartered in Austria, who were one of the first companies to produce an electronic sow feeder. They are bringing their Baby feed piglet cup and pipeline system to EuroTier 2016. The Baby feed system will deliver milk plus higher DM feeds, plus one bowl supplies two pens. The feed kitchen, lines and cups are all cleaned automatically using a system which is exclusive to Schauer. A system to supply 100 farrowing pens costs €25000.
ACO Funki A/S are based in Herning, Denmark and has been there since 1933. With the advent of several different hyper prolific genotypes the industry is having to re-think their feeding strategy which now involves feeding different rations both during gestation and lactation, to maximise sow output. The Inn-O-Valve Sow is a new feed dispenser fitted with an integrated feed valve. The valve is pneumatically operated to allow two different rations to be fed. A washing programme is also built into the system allowing the lines to be washed between farrowing batches. There is a growing trend to use the farrowing pen as a rearing pen – the sow is taken from the piglets rather than vice-versa – so the piglets don’t suffer the stress of being moved at weaning. This system was common in Holland 30 years ago but disappeared over time. Maybe the concept in 2016 has a new angle – time will tell on that. To accommodate both sow and weaner feeding ACO-Funki has developed their Combi-Feeder, whereby different feed dispenser mechanisms can be fitted to the base of the vertical feed pipe, located just above the trough.
Shoulder sores can be a problem these days and so ACO- Funki is introducing their Comfort Plate. This is a 60cm x 40cm polymer concrete plate which sits in the farrowing crate under the sow’s shoulders. Polymer concrete is much stronger than regular concrete plus is non-slip and has no sharp edges. Nedap is a well-known name in the livestock industry and their ESF systems have been around a long time. With ESFs we have sophisticated feeding programmes but these should go hand in hand with an indication of the sow’s weight.
Manually weighing sows is a difficult process but at EuroTier 2016, Nedap will introduce Nedap Weight Monitoring, which will be incorporated into their ESF system, so that the sow is automatically weighed as she moves through the feeder system. Knowing her weight means that she can be fed correctly thus saving feed and of course money.
Bewital Agri is a specialist German feed company and their EuroTier 2016, innovation is Bewi-Fatrix SynerG+. Piglets are prone to infection caused by gram positive bacteria such as Streptococcus, which have been treated in the past with antibiotics. Nowadays we have to reduce antibiotic use. Bewi-Fatrix SynerG+ is a matrix- encapsulated combination based on lauric acid and vegetable extracts and in an in-vitro trial this product, included at a 0.1 per cent concentration, reduced the growth of Streptococcus by 50 per cent. Feed on a farm has to be stored generally in feed bins/silos and UK Company Collinson makes a range of feed silos for the livestock industry. The silos are made of steel and are smooth sided. This means that feed flows easily and doesn’t stick, which can be the case with corrugated sided bins. The silos can be painted in a variety of colours, although white is of course popular in hot climates. The company wants to export more silos as the UK market is limited and so is exhibiting at EuroTier for the first time this year, as it sees the Hannover event as an ideal venue to showcase their products.
So, some very interesting new innovations to help pig producers make more money. Being something of a cynic, I think to myself, just how many of these new products will still be with us in 10 years’ time – time will tell. •
— By Norman Crabtree
