AgriNews highlights how modern expertise retains hogs cool.

A patented cooling pad expertise for hogs will probably be out there subsequent spring. The cooling pads include 2-by-4-foot aluminum tread plates positioned on prime of copper pipes that flow into water. Sensors within the pads are capable of detect if the hog is just too scorching and can flow into new water to maintain the pad cool. Conserving sows cooler in the summertime has a number of advantages, together with improved feed consumption, milk output, and piglet wean weight. The expertise was developed by Allan Schinckel, a professor in Purdue’s Division of Animal Sciences, and Robert M. Stwalley III, an affiliate scientific professor in Purdue’s Division of Agricultural and Organic Engineering.

The manufacturing and sale of the cooling pad expertise will probably be dealt with by IHT Group, a division of Decisive Dividend Company. In keeping with Francisco Cabezon, analysis president at Pipestone Analysis, lactating sows scale back their feed consumption and milk output beneath heat-stress situations in an try to scale back their metabolic warmth manufacturing. This results in detrimental results on piglet progress and subsequent reproductive efficiency. For boars, warmth stress results in decreased sperm motility and focus, in addition to a rise in sperm abnormalities.

Preliminary analysis on the cooling pad expertise confirmed that sows turned extra snug when utilizing the pads. Total respiration charges decreased, inner temperatures have been barely decrease, and each day most temperatures have been additionally decrease. As well as, the sows produced extra warmth, leading to a rise in feed consumption and milk manufacturing. This enchancment in animal welfare and well-being is important. Piglets who used the cooling pads skilled a 26% improve in weaning weight and a 7.2% improve in feed consumption.