Imagine being able to weigh your pigs daily and not having to enter the barn. That technology is now available and is being tested in a barn in Iowa.

The system is called ProGrow. It was developed in Denmark by a company named SKOV and is being distributed and installed in North America by Mackay Equipment Sales. The Saskatoon-based company is keeping an eye on the Iowa barn — literally.

Grant Mackay, the company’s sales and service technician, was sitting with his laptop during a recent seminar in Saskatoon. Projected on a screen was a live look at the inside of a barn in Iowa. With strokes on his keyboard, Mackay could monitor such things as feed and water levels. He could open and close vents & turn fans off and on.

It was like he was playing a video game.

SKOV has a long history with production monitoring. It has a long working relationship with Mackay Equipment Sales as well.

Some of the components of ProGrow have been in existence for a number of years. Weighing pigs using cameras is a new feature.

“Now we have the information about the pig’s weight. We can combine all that data in the computer and monitor the production on a daily basis,” Hans Ulrik Jensen of SKOV said at the seminar.

“Manual weighs are hard work and (lack) precision. You need to do it at the same time, the same day of the week. That could be a problem when you don’t know what has happened between the two, but it is better than nothing.

“ProGrow can give you real-time data. You can see the weight gain on a daily basis and the weight variance between the pigs in the pen.”

He explained the principles of the technology.

“The camera is based on an algorithm that looks at the collation between the top surface of the pig and the height. So, we have this picture and the computer will look at the surface area of the pig and we know the mounting height of the camera and then we will get a calculated weight on the pig.

“It works on contrasts. There has to be contrasts between the pig and the floor. If the floor is the same colour as the pig, we don’t have any approved pictures.”

The cameras take five pictures every second. The system eliminates the lowest and highest 25 per cent of the weights and then calculates an average. About 3,000 photos are taken a day in a pen of 100 pigs.

“We have a precision of 97 per cent from seven kilos to 110 kilos,” Jensen said. “This system provides the farmer with a lot of data, so it is very easy for the farmer to look into his production in order to make some changes.”

He cited examples of farmers seeing a drop in daily weight and not immediately knowing why. With ProGrow, he said the producer is equipped to find the source of the problem quickly. In one case, weight loss was substantial, he said.

“When we use ProGrow, we can measure and detect fluctuations in production due to feed —missing feed and quality of feed. That is the key to making more money. You have to be focussing on details a lot more in the finishing production.”

Eldon Mackay, the owner and president of Mackay’s, has been working with SKOV for about 40 years. It started when Mackay went to Denmark for a trade show. At that time, power was expensive in Saskatchewan, especially during harsh winters.

“When I went to that trade show, I was looking at the heat exchanging they were using back then — those were glass tube heat exchangers. They were glass tubes because you could wash them and all those kinds of things.”

His initial reaction was the heat-exchange technology wouldn’t be adopted in North America anytime soon.

“To gain an appreciation of hot water heating, it probably took 12, 15 years.”

A business and personal relationship with SKOV was forged at that tradeshow.

He believes in ProGrow and wants to introduce it to pork producers. He has his eyes on the United States, where new technology isn’t always easily embraced.

“We are that keen and that confident in the technology the SKOV company brings. If we can help out pig producers in the U.S., we are more than happy to share that experience. That sounds benevolent maybe.

“We have met some very good people in the United States and they are good to work with. We can certainly share what we are doing and especially the expertise that can help that along.”

Mackay said he was skeptical of the technology at first. At the time, ProGrow was being used mostly in nurseries.

“So, they moved more to finishing hogs, it happened to coincide with the work we are doing in Iowa and we thought ‘hmm, maybe this is an opportunity.’”

Mackay Equipment Sales has long been involved in providing heating, ventilation, feeding and drinking systems.

“I have worked with scientists in Denmark and it’s only because of a genuine interest in that kind of stuff. So, this seems like a natural thing for us to do.

“This one gives us a challenge, it’s new and has enhanced our network and that’s one huge asset on the production side and the product development side. I do a lot of sharing of ideas about system design. That’s why I go back to Denmark almost every year.”

He said it is imperative that the system works.

“When you are providing products for birds or animals, these are very large facilities and if something isn’t working right, the losses can be very significant. There is a lot of moral responsibility to not leave that location until you are very confident and satisfied everything is working like it should be.”

He said the barn in Iowa is a perfect testing ground for ProGrow.

“(The producer) was in trouble because his local dealer couldn’t help him anymore and we said, ‘we can have a look and make some suggestions.’ That is how our work started in this.” •

— By Cam Hutchinson