Pig Herd Management System

Description

Coming Soon – Contact us for more information

Features, Benefits & Business Advantages

Modern pig farming depends on accurate information and timely decision-making. A comprehensive Herd Management System transforms raw production data into meaningful insights, enabling producers to improve productivity, profitability, and overall herd performance.

1. Benchmarking Against Industry Standards

Key Features

• Compare your herd’s performance with recognised industry benchmarks.
• Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across all production areas.
• Automatically calculate herd averages for reproductive, health and growth traits.
• Identify underperforming animals and production bottlenecks.

Benefits

• Detect reproductive, health and growth problems at an early stage.
• Identify low-performing sows that reduce herd profitability and should be considered for culling.
• Measure improvements over time using objective performance data.
• Focus management attention on areas with the greatest impact on profitability.
• Generate professional production reports that demonstrate efficiency and financial performance to banks, investors and financial institutions when applying for funding.

2. Digital Record Keeping

Key Features

• Replace paper record sheets with a secure digital database.
• Store lifetime production records for every sow and pig.
• Instant retrieval of historical production information.
• Automatic calculations of production parameters.

Benefits

• Eliminate the risk of losing valuable production records.
• Reduce administrative workload and human calculation errors.
• Save countless hours previously spent calculating production figures manually.
• Automatically calculate important performance indicators, including:
  • Inter-farrowing period
  • Weaning-to-service interval
  • Non-productive sow days
  • Average Daily Gain (ADG)
  • Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR)
  • Piglets born alive
  • Piglets weaned per sow per year (PWSY)
  • Mortality rates
  • Days to slaughter
  • Maintain complete production histories for management and audit purposes.

3. Automated Herd Management Scheduling

Key Features

Automatically schedules and generates reminders for routine herd management activities through weekly and monthly reports.

Health Management

• Vaccination programmes
• Deworming schedules
• Iron injections
• Piglet teeth clipping
• Tail docking
• Vitamin supplementation
• Disease prevention programmes

Reproductive Management

• Return-to-service checks
• Heat detection
• Pregnancy diagnosis
• Expected farrowing dates
• Weaning dates
• Breeding schedules
• Sow replacement planning

Benefits

• Ensure no critical management task is overlooked.
• Improve labour planning and workflow.
• Reduce reproductive failures caused by missed management activities.
• Improve herd health through timely preventative treatments.
• Increase consistency across the entire operation.

4. Improved Profitability

The System Identifies Hidden Profit Losses

Many costly production problems remain unnoticed because calculating production parameters manually is time-consuming. The system automatically identifies issues affecting profitability, including:

• Excessive days to slaughter
• Long inter-farrowing intervals
• High numbers of non-productive sow days
• Poor feed efficiency
• High mortality rates
• Low farrowing percentages
• Poor growth performance

Profit Improvement Opportunities

The information generated allows management to:

• Improve growth rates through better feed formulation.
• Reduce feed costs by improving Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR).
• Reduce non-productive sow days by identifying and culling poor-performing animals.
• Lower pre-weaning mortality through targeted health interventions.
• Improve labour allocation and training by focusing staff on identified problem areas.
• Increase pigs sold per sow per year.
• Improve overall farm profitability through informed management decisions.

5. Improved Management Control, Staff Performance & Accountability

Better Management Information

Managers receive accurate, up-to-date reports that provide a clear picture of herd performance and highlight areas requiring attention.

Staff Engagement

The system creates measurable production targets that staff can work towards with confidence.

Performance indicators may include:

• Piglets weaned per sow per year
• Pre-weaning mortality rateFarrowing rate
• Conception rate
• Heat detection accuracy
• Non-productive sow days
• Average weaning weight
• Litters per sow per year
• Feed Conversion Ratio
• Average Daily Gain

Benefits

• Improved accountability at every level.
• Easier performance monitoring.
• Better communication between management and staff.
• Greater employee motivation through measurable goals.
• Opportunity to introduce performance-based incentive schemes that reward staff for achieving production targets.

6. Scaling Your Operation & Industry Compliance

Breaking Through the Growth Bottleneck

The biggest hurdle for a 20-sow farmer is scaling up to 50 or 100 sows. Growth at this stage isn’t just about more pigs — it’s about proving to banks and investors that your operation runs on tight, professional, audit-ready records. The Piggery Herd Management System becomes that operational infrastructure, giving you the documented performance history lenders and investors want to see before committing funding.

Pork 360 Readiness, Built In

To sell to major South African abattoirs, farmers must comply with Pork 360 Standards, which mandate strict traceability, medicine logs, and record-keeping. Rather than scrambling to assemble these records manually, the system works as your Pork 360 Readiness Tool — generating audit-ready registers with a single click, so you’re always prepared for a compliance check or a new buyer relationship.

Key Benefits

• Documented growth history to support funding applications
• One-click audit-ready registers for Pork 360 compliance
• Confidence to scale from 20 sows toward 50–100+ without losing operational control

 

Better Decisions Through Better Information

A Herd Management System does far more than store records—it becomes a powerful management tool that enables data-driven decision-making, continuous improvement, and long-term profitability.

By identifying problems early, monitoring performance continuously, and measuring progress objectively, producers can maximise productivity while reducing unnecessary costs.

Remember

“You cannot fix a problem until you know that the problem exists. Accurate records transform guesswork into informed management decisions.”