83 At the Slat Level: Data Needed versus What’s A Waste of Time
Authors: Mahoney Jeff 
Published: October 2022

Introduction The animal agriculture industry is an excellent example of an area that relies on data to drive decision making. It is imperative that as technology continues to evolve, it is vetted and proven that it can be impactful to production. However, it must also be proven that there is a need for the new technology, as there are instances where data or technology can tell us to make changes, but those changes may be difficult to implement, execute, or follow up on in the barn setting. Practical and simple solutions are typically the most impactful and lucrative on the swine side of animal agriculture. Discussion To better understand what is needed practically, it makes sense that we could look at postmortems on technology that should have worked but failed in our system. There are examples of both processes and products that have been unsuccessful in our system, mostly due to the size of the company and the difficulty of executing tasks that require precision and accuracy. Multidose bags of semen is an example of technology that works in practice, but not in our system specifically. With the adoption of multidose bags of semen came many seemingly easy but crucial steps that had to be taken for success. The bags had to be rotated to ensure the temperature was kept correct and constant. This was a struggle for our employees to remember to rotate throughout the day while they are focused on many other tasks that also must be accomplished during the workday. The size of sow farm and their daily number of breeds also played into this failed process. If smaller farms did not breed enough females in a single day, the bag would have to be transported back and forth between the barn and the semen cooler until it was used completely or expired. These farms were observed to have the most opportunity with conception rate. Although the multidose bagged semen itself wasn’t something that worked for our system, we were still able to learn from it and make advances. After understanding where the misses were with the multidose bags, we were able to lower sperm count and began utilizing single low dose tubes. This was much easier for employees to execute and manage, and transportation throughout the farm became more efficient, as breeders only took the right amount of doses with them each time they went to the barn. Understanding the system that will be utilizing the data and technology is key. There are many examples of technology that has been implemented within our system that have been a success. UV chambers, MAXIMUS© controllers, and onsite GDU self-training stations are examples of innovations that have been introduced and have been a win for our teams. The Maschhoffs viewed lunch and small item supply entry as one of the biggest biosecurity risk areas to our farms. After discussions with other swine companies, we learned of others using UV chambers as a disinfection method for item entry. After trialing on select farms, buy in from employees was good and utilizing the chambers was easier and safer than double bagging and spraying items with disinfectant prior to entry utilizing a pass-through window. Implementation of UV chambers for the rest of the region’s farms went very well. Soon after implementation, employees noticed that the UV light in the chambers was changing the taste of their food. The UV chambers utilized on our farms are “homemade”, so internal research was completed to understand more about the intensity of UVC light that was being emitted per cycle and what materials could be penetrated by the UVC light. It was determined that glass and opaque materials do not allow for UVC light penetration, therefore preserve the taste of food. As a region, we purchased glass Tupperware sets for all the farm employees and as a result have gotten much better compliance with UV chamber execution. Continued education is always crucial when a new technology or protocol is implemented but listening to feedback from the people that are asked to use the technology or execute the protocol is critical for success. The future of data-driven decision making in animal agriculture lies in simplicity and practicality. Technology that Ihope to see forward progress on revolve around improved biosecurity, animal husbandry and animal health alerts, and technology that gives our employees the confidence and know-how to complete the tasks and protocols, even if they don’t have an ag background. As discussed above, it is important to note that with a system as large and complex as The Maschhoffs, many technologies work very well, just not under the constraints of our system. The key to our success is to identify technologies that can easily become a part of what we do every day.