Recording pig herd performance data

Explore practical methods to capture and harness pig herd performance data to enhance your business operations and strive for continuous improvement.

There are numerous opportunities for data collection throughout the pork production process. Capturing this data allows you to monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs) enabling you to benchmark your performance and strive to improve your business success to its maximum potential.

Performance recording and spending time understanding the data helps pinpoint which changes could make the most significant difference in pig performance and cutting costs. Businesses benefit from spending time understanding trends and patterns in performance data, as well as establishing what information is most useful to observe on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.

Maximising pig data

Without good recordkeeping, the decisions made on-farm are little more than guesswork. Accurate recording of data is essential, and the increased use of mobile-data-capture devices and automated readers maximises the accuracy and speed of data capture.

Find out more on maximising the value of your captured data

Benchmarking in pig production

Some herd-management systems offer benchmarking options, and these should be used to check progress against the targets set within the business and agreed by the farm staff. Benchmarking can be internal or external.

Find out more on the types of benchmarking, and how to set and monitor realistic targets

Pig Electronic Identification technology (EID)

Electronic Identification (EID) offers many benefits for the handling of pigs. EID uses a microchip, or electronic transponder, embedded in a tag, bolus or implant to identify individual pigs. The data collected from EID technology can be harnessed in a magnitude of different ways by herd management software. This is also part of our Farm Excellence programme, Precision Pig. 

Find out more on Pig EID technology

Pig weighing systems case study

A commercial growth trial has been undertaken to determine the value of individually identifying pigs throughout their life. It was found that the additional weight added to pigs by weighing has clearly covered the cost of additional staff time.

View our case study about the value of pig weighing systems